Connect Pro 7 is here!
We've been using Connect Pro 7 internally at Adobe for a while, and I've been able to take advantage of some of the great new features.....
May 06, 2008
July 10, 2007
How we use it- Employee Meetings
Two weeks ago, Adobe had its quarterly employee meeting. Because of our large employee base in San Jose, we hosted the all-hands meeting from a nearby auditorium that seats over 1500 people. We also have multiple other sites and countless remote employees, so Acrobat Connect Pro comes in very handy in order to reach these employees. Webcasting our employee meetings makes obvious sense, but it also comes with some challenges. These quarterly meetings often include live software demos, videos, and multiple presenters, all packed into a 1 1/2 hour production that has an audience of more than 5000 people.
Because we are working at a live event outside of our normal conference rooms, we need to work with the production crew that produces the event to get the camera and audio feeds. In order to broadcast these feeds out through Acrobat Connect, we set up a desktop PC backstage with a video/audio capture card. This works great to capture the live production cameras along with the PA audio. During the employee meetings, there are also many great live demos of up and coming products. To capture these, we simply have the live demo team login into the Acrobat Connect Meeting Room, and then share their desktop before their demo.
Because there are multiple agenda items and presenters, we create separate layouts for each agenda item, so we can stay organized and also follow the flow of the event. This works well, especially when we are switching from a layout that features a flash video to a layout that features a presenter going over some slides. No need to scramble when you can customize all of the layouts ahead of time with their own names and in the order of the agenda. After all the layouts are setup, we upload all the finished slides and converted videos into the content library for easy access.
As for the demos, we used the "screen sharing in prepare mode" trick I wrote about a few entries ago. This helps the event run flawlessly, because the last thing on a live demo presenter's mind is to share the screen over Acrobat Connect when you are in front of more than 1500 people!
In addition to the production of the show, the way the event and meeting room is setup is equally important. Because this is a confidential employee meeting, security over Acrobat Connect is crucial. To address the need for security, we use the event module to invite our remote employees who need to view the event over Acrobat Connect. This way, we won't have to worry about accepting any unregistered guests. If they weren't invited, they won't be let in to the meeting room. It is also very easy to add attendees on the fly using the enterprise manager. All they need is the link and their own personal login, so I don't need to worry about being a gate-keeper, Acrobat Connect Pro does it for me.
With any large event, there are always some surprises involved. This particular meeting had a presenter change at the last minute and a live demo from a remote site. Easy enough. We just changed the name of the new presenter's layout, and changed the title slide and reloaded it into the content library. For the remote demo presenter, we had him login to the meeting room and share his desktop. We had our PC send the VGA signal to the production crew so they could broadcast the Acrobat Connect Meeting to the live audience over the projector screens and used the Full screen toggle for a crisp, live demo experience. The remote demonstration looked great on the big screen in front of more than 1500 people!
A live broadcast of an employee meeting is very valuable, but even more valuable is the archive that we capture. Because we use multiple layouts, the archive can be divided into a table of contents, and easily navigated for later viewing. Also, we can set access permissions for these archives, so employees are required to login to Acrobat Connect Pro in order to view them. If we need to take the archive down at any time, we can just take away all the viewing permissions for that particular piece of content.
In summary, it's easy to broadcast these large events using Acrobat Connect Pro. All you need is a PC with an internet connection and an A/V capture card, some content, and an A/V feed from the PA system or a production crew. Below is a screenshot from our last employee meeting.
RM
May 16, 2007
Discovering Templates
Today we'll take a look at the best way to use meeting templates with Acrobat Connect Pro. Just like an email template or spreadsheet template, meeting templates are a powerful tool that can save you time when you create multiple meetings based off the same design or layout scheme. Before I get into how to effectively use templates, let's take a look at how to create one.
As a regular user, you have the ability to create your own personal meeting template. In fact, it's so easy, you can create a template from any of your existing meetings. The only thing you need to do is move one of your existing meetings into your "My Templates" folder. Done. See how easy that is? Suppose you don't have a meeting that is worthy to create a template from. Start from scratch and create a new meeting. Before we start creating our template, let's take a look at what information a template stores.
Layouts, pods, and most contents and room information are preserved in the template, including the following:
* Layouts with name, order, and starting (selected) status
* Pods with name, size, position, and settings for full-screen toggle
* Pod content
* Page number in FlashPaper and position of the seek bar in Flash Video (FLV file)
* Whiteboard overlay contents
* Poll state (Prepare, Open, Close), questions, answers, and broadcast results
* Questions and answers, Chat pod link, and status (Open, Answered, All)
* Text in Notes pod
* Camera and voice settings
* Room on hold (Yes, No)
* Value for guest entry
* Messages to be displayed to users when a meeting is on hold or ended
* Room background, screen resolution, and bandwidth
* Presenter Only area status
So, in effect, almost anything you put in your meeting room including content, notes, layouts, pod locations, etc will be there when you create a new meeting from a template. Cool - huh?
Another great feature about templates, is that once you make a template, you can always go back and change it or tweak some things. We all misspell things or forget content.
To create a template, create a new meeting (or modify and existing one) and create all the layouts and pods that you want to have in your template. Also, the template will remember what layout you left off on, and what status the meeting was on (On hold, block users, open, etc) After your template meeting is finished, simply move the meeting into your template folder. Next time you create a new meeting, you will have the option to choose that template from the template pulldown menu.
If you think this is a template that everybody would benefit from, ask your account administrator to move it into the shared templates folder.
To give you some ideas on how templates can best be used, here are some ways we use templates at Adobe.
1. We use Acrobat Connect with our large meeting rooms, and we frequently integrate the voice and camera pod with these meetings. Because they are large meetings, more of the focus is on slides and other content than chat/polls/etc. We've created a template that reflects this focus and also has renamed some of the pods and layouts - instead of the "chat" pod, it's called "questions for the presenter"
2. A while ago, our Knowledge worker business unit asked us to create a template for their sales staff. This template not only has content specific layouts, but it also has all the relevant content included in all the appropriate layouts. This content includes a custom background, videos, presentations, and PDF's in the file sharing pod. It's basically a virtual starter kit for our sales staff when they have to create a connect meeting room for a customer.
3. We conduct over 50 eSeminars a month, and many of them are new topics. To make creating these rooms easy, we've created a template that has specific layouts according to our eSeminar flow. We've also created polling questions that we ask in every eSeminar. That alone saves us the time from cutting and pasting polling questions 50 times a month!
Hopefully this will give you some ideas on how to create templates and how to use them effectively.