Setup Guide - TTHub

What to Expect

Your welcome e-mail will contain information about your new server, as well as a link to this guide. This will include the following:

The host name according to the location you chose
A port number (in the 10000 range)
The username for your administrator account
The password for that account

At that point, your server can only be accessed by logging into that administrator account. To open it up to the public, you'll need to create at least one user account.

A Note About Mobile Devices

Currently, the TeamTalk apps for iOS and Android don't provide a way to set up user accounts. The easiest way to create them is by using the desktop client, or Doug Lee's TeamTalk Commander. Additionally, you can e-mail account details so they can be manually created.

First-time Setup

This section explains the process of logging in, setting up user accounts, and creating channels from a desktop client.

Note: As of TeamTalk 5.8, it is no longer necessary to install the classic client for accessibility on Windows. These instructions will be largely the same across both the classic and modern clients. You can read more about the transition away from TeamTalk classic on the BearWare website.

Connecting for the First Time

Open the TeamTalk client and press f2, or click the connect button.

You'll be placed in a list of saved servers. Since you're logging in with a default username and password, it's a good idea not to save your new server until you've finalized the accounts.

Beyond that servers list, there are text fields for entering details for a new server. Make sure to enter your port number in both the TCP and UDP fields. When you're done, press enter or click the connect button. We'll discuss how to save this server after finalizing user accounts.

Naming the server

You may notice that the server is just called TeamTalk Server right now. You can change this through the server properties option in the server menu, or by pressing f9. You can also add a welcome message (or MOTD) which will be shown to every user when they log in.

User Management

TeamTalk has an extensive screen for controlling the users that have access to each server. Since you're (hopefully) logged in as an administrator by now, you can now create user accounts for others to use.

You access this screen from the server menu, or by pressing ctrl+shift+l. Right now, the list will only have one account, and that account won't be selected. If you select an account from the list, its details will be filled in and you can view, edit, and re-write them. If you don't select an account, the username and password fields will be blank, and the permissions checkboxes will be in their default state.

Editing the administrator account

You probably want to give the administrator a good password, and you might want to change its name to yours. You can do this all at once from the user accounts screen:

From the accounts list, click or press space to highlight the administrator.
In the Username field, you can optionally enter a new account name
Enter a password in the password field. (Other administrators can see this password and it's stored in plain text, so don't use something too common.)
Press alt+a to add the new user account.
If you changed the username, you'll need to delete the old account. Go back to the accounts list, select the first administrator account, and press alt+d to delete it permanently.

Lastly, it's a good idea to double check the account info you entered, including any capitals in the name and password. You'll need to enter them in order to save the server, and both of them are case sensitive.

Saving the Server

Once you've set up your account, disconnect and open the connections window again. (You can do this really easily by pressing f2 twice.)

Change the username and password to the ones you just created. Find the entry name field, and give your server a name you'll recognize. This doesn't change the name other people see, but it gives the server a title in your connection manager. Press alt+a or the add/update button, and finally, press alt+c or the connect button. This will save the server, and reconnect you to it.

Opening up the server: The Easy Way

There are a couple of ways you can allow people to access your server. The first is to create an anonymous account so that users don't need to enter any information at all. This is less secure, but ideal for public servers, and it only needs to be set up once.

Go to the user accounts list. By default, nothing will be selected, and that's exactly what we want.
Make sure the username and password fields are both empty, and press alt+a.
You'll see a prompt confirming you want to create an anonymous account. Go ahead and confirm this, then close the user accounts window.

This process may seem counterintuitive, but you're telling the TeamTalk server to accept logins from a username of blank and a password of blank. Put that way, the empty username and password fields should make sense.

Opening Up the Server: The Secure Way

There are a couple of approaches to securing the server. You can achieve a medium level of security by filling in a username or a password when creating the anonymous account. The info will be shared with anyone who needs it, but it won't be blank, so unauthorized users would have a harder time guessing it.

To achieve maximum security, create a separate user account for every person who uses the server, using the same process as creating an anonymous account. We can condense this to three steps:

Open the accounts list.
Enter the username and password.
Press alt+a to write the account info.

Since the text fields clear themselves when you press the add button, you can immediately go back and enter more account info without closing the user list.

Creating Other Administrators

You can create other admin accounts the same way you create normal users. There is a set of radio buttons to choose whether a newly created account is a default user or an administrator.

Administrators can kick or ban people, create and edit channels, edit the server properties, see the IP addresses of everyone on the server, and intercept people's audio streams and text messages. Administrators can also see all other users on the server as well as their passwords. In short, if you can do something to your server, any other administrator can. Your admin account doesn't have any extra powers.

You can avoid giving someone complete administrative power by leaving their account type set to default user, and using the checkboxes to control their level of access to the server. Default users will never be able to intercept private communications or look at the user list, even if all the boxes are checked. They will be able to see IP addresses if you give them permission to ban users from the server. For simplicity, let's refer to these not-quite-administrators as moderators

If you plan on having more than one moderator, checking these boxes for each account can be quite tedious. Here is a workaround:

Open the user accounts screen and start creating an account called moderator with a random password. You can use a password generator or simply press some keys until you come up with some suitable jibberish.
Before pressing add, check off all the permissions you're willing to give to your server moderators. Once you've done this, you can add this account as a sort of template for new moderators.
Next time you create a moderator, select this account in the list. Change the username and password for the new moderator, and press the add button. A new account will be created with the same permissions, but the old moderator template will still remain in the list.

Channel management

TeamTalk's channel system consists of a tree view which contains all the channels on the server, and all the users in those channels. Each channel can contain other channels, as well as other users, which will appear on top of those channels.

Unless you uncheck the relevant box, every user can create a temporary channel inside of their current one. This channel will stay until the last person leaves or the server is restarted. Administrators have an extra checkbox to make a channel permanent.

Creating and editing channels

You can create a new channel by pressing f7 or by using the channels menu. The default settings are great for most voice communication, but there are some tips later for making music or mobile-friendly channels.

When you create a channel as an administrator, it will become a subchannel of the one under your cursor. As a user, you'll create it under the one you joined. This is to prevent users from creating subchannels if they don't have access to the parent channel.

Administrators and channel operators can press shift+f7 to edit the channel under the cursor. This window will look much like the one for creating a channel. The voice quality cannot be changed when there are users in the channel, even if none of them are transmitting.

Recommended Minimum Quality Settings

Description	Codec	Sample Rate	Bit Rate	Other Options
HQ Voice	Opus Voice	48000	40000
Music	Opus Music	48000	80000	Channels: 2 (Stereo)
LQ Voice	Opus Voice	24000	24000	Ignore Silence