Your users have been spoiled by modern collaborative tools. They expect to jump into your app and immediately start working together, seeing each other's cursors, leaving comments that appear instantly, watching edits happen in real-time. The problem? Building all of that yourself is a complete headache that'll eat up months of development time. Instead of reinventing the wheel and building from scratch, you could just plug in features from Velt collaboration SDK and get back to building what makes your product unique.

TLDR

• Velt Huddle provides Slack-style audio, video, and screensharing calls that integrate directly into any application with just 10 lines of code

• Unlike traditional video conferences, huddles are lightweight, audio-first conversations that are spontaneous and can last from 1 minute, to hours-long like traditional scheduled meetings

• Supports all major frameworks (React, Vue, Angular, Svelte, and vanilla JS) while competitors typically only support React

• Enterprise-grade security with SOC 2 Type II and HIPAA compliance

• Handles complex WebRTC infrastructure automatically with features like automatic reconnection and offline queuing

What is Velt Huddle?

Velt Huddles bring Slack-like audio, video, and screenshare calls directly into any application.

Slack made huddles popular as a way to bring spontaneous office chats into online and remote work environments. They allow teams to instantly start collaborating with zero friction. Huddles have become the fastest-adopted feature type in collaboration tools because they solve the "quick question" problem that email and async messaging can't handle .

Velt is special because it handles all the tricky backend parts including WebRTC elements, bandwidth issues, and connection problems that most teams don't think about or want to deal with when building real-time audio and video features.

Slack's expansion of huddles to include video and screenshare proved that users want feature improvements. Start with audio, add video when needed, share screens for context. Velt Huddle follows this same philosophy while giving developers complete control over the experience. Instead of having users to switch between your app and external tools, like Slack and Teams, huddles keep conversations centralized. Velt Huddle empowers users to collaborate without breaking their workflow.

Core Features of Velt Huddle

The trio of elements that Velt focuses on are audio calls, video calls, and screen sharing. The audio-first approach cuts down on meeting fatigue while keeping conversations on track. Users can flip to video with a simple click when they need to.

What sets Velt apart is the powerful screen sharing. Two participants can broadcast their desktops at the same time, which is incredibly useful for side-by-side comparison or troubleshooting. Our platform infrastructure handles all the in-depth WebRTC management, bandwidth optimization, and connection reliability automatically.

Audio Calling Capabilities

Velt's audio setup gives you clear communication with built-in noise suppression and echo cancellation. It manages bandwidth so you get good quality even when your internet connection isn't the best.

The technical advantages become clear when you consider what building this from scratch involves. WebRTC audio requires handling codec negotiation, NAT traversal, connection fallbacks, and real-time quality monitoring. Velt's infrastructure takes care of all of this.

Velt has solid networking elements built in like automatic reconnection when your connection drops, offline queuing for messages you send when the internet's acting up, and cleanup that prevents resource leaks.

Video Integration

When conversations need a more personal touch, users can easily turn on camera video without disrupting the flow. Velt optimizes video streams for bandwidth performance while keeping quality that works across different device capabilities.

The progressive enhancement model means huddles start lightweight and grow as needed. A quick question might stay audio-only, while a design review naturally evolves to include video for better collaboration.

Video quality adjusts based on your connection and what device you're using. So whether you're on a fancy desktop or just your phone with spotty wifi, everyone gets an easy experience.

Screen Sharing and Collaboration

The screen sharing in Velt Huddle is pretty cool. You can have multiple people sharing their screens at the same time, which makes working together easier. This comes in handy for things like code reviews when developers want to compare different approaches, or when designers need to look at several versions side by side.

Setting Up Velt Huddle in Your Application

Simple implementation is where Velt really shines compared to building similar functionality from scratch. While a custom WebRTC solution might require thousands of lines of code and months of development, Velt Huddle integrates with just a few lines.

Here's the basic React setup:

import { VeltProvider, VeltHuddle, VeltHuddleTool } from '@veltdev/react';

export default function App() {
  return (
    <VeltProvider apiKey="YOUR_API_KEY">
      <VeltHuddle />
      <div className="toolbar">
        <VeltHuddleTool type='all' />
      </div>
      {/* Your app content */}
    </VeltProvider>
  );
}

That's it. Seriously. The VeltProvider handles authentication and connection management, while the VeltHuddle and VeltHuddleTool pieces provide the complete user interface for starting and managing calls. Your users will get a clean, professional communication experience without any additional development effort.

Integration Across Different Frameworks

One of Velt's biggest advantages is complete framework support. While most collaboration SDKs focus only on React, Velt gives first-class support for React, Vue, Angular, Svelte, and vanilla JavaScript.

This framework flexibility matters because development teams use diverse technology stacks. A Vue-based dashboard application shouldn't be forced to add React dependencies just for collaboration features. Velt adapts to your existing architecture instead of forcing foundational changes.

The implementation approach remains consistent across frameworks while respecting each framework's conventions and patterns. Our implementation comparison shows how Velt's approach makes everything simpler across all supported frameworks while keeping the same features and performance.

Customization and Branding Options

Velt's customization goes beyond just basic theming. Many SDKs let you change colors and swap logos, but Velt gives you total control over the UI, how things behave, and how everything fits together.

You can use Velt wireframes to completely rebuild the components of the SDK. You can add your own custom widgets to Velt's components as well as remove ones that you do not want to use. You can even have these widget interact with hooks from external applications to supercharge workflows the way you need them to.

The theming system works with CSS custom properties too. If your team wants complete control? Go headless. You get all the functionality through APIs while building whatever interface you want.

For advanced components, there's webhook integration for custom notifications, API extensions when you need specialized data handling, and event system integration for your analytics and monitoring needs.

Real-time Performance and Scalability

When it comes to Velt's infrastructure, the numbers speak for themselves. Our Growth plan handles 200M comments and 2TB of data, while most competitors tap out at 100K comments and 8GB.

Networking works behind the scenes to keep things running smooth. If your connection drops, it automatically reconnects. Taking actions while offline? They get queued up and sent when you're back online. Plus, we clean up stale sessions so you don't get resource leaks messing things up. All of this happens without you having to think.

Use Cases for In-App Huddle Calls

Huddle calls are flexible. You can see how great they work for all kinds of situations where you need quick, on-the-spot communication. The typical huddle runs about 10 minutes versus those 30-minute scheduled meetings, which saves time and cuts down on meeting burnout.

They're perfect when you need to make fast decisions. Team members can jump into a huddle, sort out whatever's going on, and get right back to what they were doing.

Our customer Trumpet has had great feedback after adding huddles to its sales room platform. This is because their users, mainly sales organizations, can use short instantaneous calls to clear up confusion with customers, or just give some friendly reassurance that buyers appreciate.

Another big plus is keeping your context intact. When people are already working in your app, huddles let them chat without losing their spot, jumping between different apps, or messing up their flow.

Design and Creative Collaboration

Design teams love using huddles to get quick feedback while they're working on creative projects. Designers can just grab stakeholders on the spot for real-time input on whatever they're building, no need to set up formal review meetings. The screen sharing lets everyone look at different design options at the same time, which makes it easier to make decisions together. When you're working on visual problems, there's nothing better than being able to talk through it right away while you're looking at it.

Development Team Communication

Engineering teams benefit from instant voice communication during code reviews, pair programming sessions, and troubleshooting. In-depth technical discussions often are solved faster through voice than through text.

Analytics and monitoring scenarios particularly benefit from huddle calls when teams need to investigate issues collaboratively and make quick decisions about system responses.

Comparison with Building In-House Solutions

The intricacy of building real-time communication features from scratch is always underestimated. WebRTC implementation alone requires expert knowledge in networking protocols, codec management, NAT traversal, and connection fallback strategies.

A typical in-house implementation requires thousands of lines of code, months of development time, ongoing infrastructure management, and specialized expertise that most teams don't have.

Velt reduces this to 10 lines of code and immediate functionality, with infrastructure that scales automatically without requiring any extra dedicated resources.

Maintenance overhead is often overlooked in build-versus-buy decisions. WebRTC standards evolve, with changing browser implementations and security requirements. Keeping a custom implementation current needs ongoing engineering investment.

For teams looking at other collaborative SDKs, the comparison often comes down to feature completeness, implementation complexity, and long-term maintenance requirements. Velt provides more features with less complexity and no ongoing maintenance burden.

FAQs

How quickly can I integrate Velt Huddle into my existing application?

Basic integration takes about 15 minutes with our React SDK. You add the VeltProvider and VeltHuddle components to your app root, drop in the VeltHuddleTool component where you want the interface, and you're ready to go. More complex customizations might take a few hours, but the core functionality works immediately.

Does Velt Huddle work on mobile devices?

Yes, Velt Huddle works across desktop browsers, mobile browsers, and can be integrated into mobile applications. The interface adapts automatically to different screen sizes and touch interfaces while keeping full functionality.

What happens if users have poor internet connections?

Velt adjusts audio and video quality based on connection speed, includes automatic reconnection when connections drop, and queues actions during network interruptions. The system puts maintaining communication first over perfect quality.

Can I customize the huddle interface to match my application's design?

Absolutely. Velt offers complete theming options, customizable wireframes for deep design system integration, and even headless implementation options for total custom interfaces. You can make huddles feel native to your application.

How does pricing work for huddle calls?

Huddle usage is included in Velt's standard pricing tiers based on active collaborators (MAC) rather than active users (MAU). This means that you are only charged for the users that actually use Huddles and other collaborative features, not for every user that signs in. There are no per-minute charges or separate communication fees. Check our pricing page for current details and usage limits.

Conclusion

Velt Huddle changes how teams communicate within applications by providing Slack-style audio, video, and screensharing calls that integrate into any development stack. The ease of implementing fully functional features with enterprise-grade security makes it the obvious choice for teams who want a professional and high quality implementation without excessive complexity.

The 10-line integration, support for all major frameworks, and automatic infrastructure management with our collaboration SDK from Velt means you can focus on building your core product while providing users with communication tools that rival dedicated platforms.