First of all, don’t get so excited, Telegram does not support videocalls for now..anyway, using an external service we might get it to do the job.

We are going to use :

  • Node-RED – hosted on XtekNodes – start for free here.
  • Telegram bot – learn how to create one here.
  • Jitsi – installed here but you can use your own.

1. Get your Node-RED hosted on XtekNodes

Very easy to do, you should have your hosted Node-RED up and running in about 5-10 minutes.It’s our startup and you will always get some kind of promotion using the link above.

2. Register a Telegram bot using Botfather

Follow steps 1,2 and 3 to create your bot, install the telegram plugin on Node-RED and configure it.

3. How it works

The bot will monitor for some keywords like “videocall” or “conference” and will respond with a message containing a random room name in Jitsi.

4. How it looks like

5. The code

Download the code and import it to Node-RED.

P.S. I know it’s not a big deal but we use it on our group and it helps. Be sure to turn off group privacy using BotFather (help)