Adobe Connect Blog

We’ve written a lot lately about the extensibility of Adobe Connect; here’s a guest perspective from RefinedData’s Terry Shane

Let’s face it, the last thing we need is another web conferencing solution! Hardly a month goes by without yet another vendor offering a solution for “virtual meetings”.  How can you choose between a growing and bewildering list of products that all claim to offer the “best” solution? An odd way to start a post about Adobe Connect, but it’s an important point.

What makes smartphones “smart” is that they’re platforms on which third parties can build applications. Today’s phones can be remote control devices, trading platforms, game consoles, GPS systems, video cameras – anything someone can dream up – even a web conferencing interface!

Similarly, it’s this kind of extensibility that differentiates Adobe Connect from other web conferencing solutions – the ability to solve business problems with custom applications that operate inside of live and recorded meetings.

Extensibility enables business applications allowing multiple participants to collaborate in ways that are not possible outside of Adobe Connect. Other web conferencing tools are the equivalent of phones with limited functions, not supporting the ability of developers to build new tools and features.

You may be aware of extensions for Adobe Connect, tools that increase functionality and/or increase engagement. For example, there are extensions that calculate the carbon or cost savings for meetings or stream live video from external sources.

These custom pods can interact with external network services such as Google Maps, Yahoo! stock feeds, Twitter, Facebook, Salesforce, PayPal or any internet- or intranet-based API. An extension can pull data from these (and other) sources, as well as push data back. A feature unique to Adobe Connect – viewers of recorded meetings may work with these tools as well; they can be written to differentiate between a live event and a recording.

Consider what could be.

The possibilities are impressive – here are some ideas:

HR: On-boarding forms or employee surveys that are submitted directly back to the corporate database and create PDF versions that are emailed to the user.

Fund raising: Allow attendees of a fund-raising webinar to make donations within the live event or when watching the recording.

Custom shopping: Enter a product SKU and receive images, descriptions, pricing and inventory availability. Purchases executed in real-time without leaving the meeting room via integrated credit card transactions. Hosts could monitor purchases (without seeing sensitive info) and be able to offer incentives or limit the purchasing opportunity.

Sales: A viewer of a recorded event is able to enter a phone number for a call back from a salesperson or call center. The extension is sophisticated enough to recognize the user’s IP address, determine country and time-zone, check if the local center is open and average wait time, and automatically arrange the call back or generate a live call.

I’m just scratching the surface, but if you’d like to suggest some of your own ideas (via comments below or by sending me an email), I’ll present some of the most innovative in a future post. There really is no limit and I’d love to see what we can come up with.

Terry Shane, CEO, Refined Data Solutions (terry@refineddata.com)

Thanks for joining our Twitterview with Randah McKinnie yesterday. If you didn’t have a chance to attend or ask a question, please find below a recap of the entire Q & A session. Randah was able to answer a series of questions on recent Adobe Connect Mobile updates and announcements.

If you have any additional questions or are interested in our next event, keep following this blog or find us on Twitter @AdobeConnect.

To help tell our story, we’ve put the finishing touches on a video that does a nice job of introducing Adobe Connect web conferencing. It highlights benefits and capabilities, and also features a few organizations that are doing great things and realizing success with the solution.
We encourage you to watch Adobe Connect in action and learn how it’s helping organizations conduct more effective eLearning, web meetings, and webinars on devices of all kinds:

Keep an eye on us here and follow @AdobeConnect on Twitter — we’ll continue to share stories, tips, news and discuss a range of web conferencing topics.

Following the significant recent updates to our Adobe Connect Mobile web conferencing apps for Android and the BlackBerry PlayBook, we’re excited to announce Adobe Connect Mobile 1.7.5 for Apple iOS is now available!

Featuring new rich hosting capabilities, improved video quality, and an updated UI and improved navigation for greater flexibility and ease of use—Adobe Connect Mobile 1.7.5 lets users host and participate in mobile conferences anytime, anywhere.

Control meeting access, permissions and activities from your mobile device

• Meeting hosts can:
  • Start and end meetings
  • Accept or deny guests from entering meetings
  • Enable or disable participant’s ability to broadcast their cameras and audio (VoIP)
  • Promote or demote user roles to and from Host, Presenter, and Participant
  • Remove users from meetings
  • Control all active pods
  • Start and stop content and screen sharing
  • Create and edit content in the Notes pod
  • Advance slides and animations (capability available to both Presenters and Hosts)

Enhanced user interface for even greater ease of use and control

• New layout and controls allow meeting attendees to more easily:
  • View all activity happening in the meeting at once
  • Focus on an activity to enter input in Public Chat, Private Chat, and Polls

Check out this demo to see some of the new features:

Adobe Connect Mobile 1.7.5 is now available for free download; check it out on iTunes Preview here. The app supports:

• iPhone 3GS with iOS 4 or higher
• iPhone 4 with iOS 4 or higher
• iPod Touch 3^rd and 4^th generation with iOS 4 or higher
• iPad and iPad 2 with iOS 4 or higher

For more information on Adobe Connect Mobile visit our Adobe Connect Mobile User Forum on connectusers.com.

We look forward to your thoughts—in comments, on Twitter @AdobeConnect, and on our mobile user forum.

Cheers,

Randah McKinnie, Principal Product Manager

By Guillaume Privat, Director, Adobe Connect

On November 8 2011, Adobe held its annual financial meeting where our executives discussed our 2012 strategy. Two items discussed were i) the focusing of Adobe resources on two key growth opportunities, Digital Media and Digital Marketing and ii) how Adobe will be reducing its investment in Flash Player for mobile.

You may be wondering what both of these announcements mean for the Adobe Connect business.

First, while Adobe is realigning its resources around two key growth opportunities, the Adobe Connect business will continue to further product innovation for customers in key verticals.

Second, Adobe also announced it was reducing its investment in Adobe Flash for mobile (in-browser Flash experience on mobile). This does not have an impact on Adobe’s Connect mobile strategy. Our strategy with Adobe Connect Mobile has been from the start to deliver our mobile meeting experience via native applications rather than via a browser as we believe apps provide the best mobile experience. Last week, we launched our latest version of Adobe Connect Mobile 1.7.5 and are already hard at work on our next release.

Adobe remains committed to delivering the best web conferencing solution to our customers.

Update: Thanks for your interest in our Twitterview originally planned for 11/10. We’re rescheduling to Thursday 11/17 at 11:00am PT. We look forward to the conversation then.

It’s time for the latest in our Adobe Connect web conferencing Twitterview series!  If you have questions about Adobe Connect in the world of mobile, including our latest Adobe Connect Mobile apps for iOS, Android and BlackBerry PlayBook, our own Principal Product Manager, Randah McKinnie, will be joining us for an exclusive Q & A session.  As our resident expert on mobile (as well as eLearning), Randah is a knowledge source you won’t want to miss.

Our previous Twitter-based interviews with Peter Ryce and Alistair Lee offered a fun chance to learn more about the inner workings of Adobe Connect.  We’re happy to keep up that tradition, so please join us on November 17th at 11AM Pacific time.

If you’re new to Adobe Connect or our Twitterviews, the process is simple: On 11/17, contact us via Twitter: @reply our AdobeConnect account and include the hashtag #AdobeConnect.  Randah will jump in on any questions, comments, or thoughts you might have regarding Adobe Connect.

Again, join us on Twitter, Thursday 11/17 from 11 – 11:30 a.m. PST and be sure to include the #AdobeConnect hashtag when you tweet @AdobeConnect.  If you can’t make it, please leave your question in the comments section of this post or send us a message on Twitter in advance and Randah will be sure to answer. Thanks for tuning in!

Mrs. Fields Famous Brands is known for delicious freshly baked cookies and TCBY frozen yogurt. They partnered with conferencing service provider MeetingOne to adopt Adobe Connect and establish a dynamic web conferencing platform. Now, staff and franchisees worldwide are more connected and via webcams, can engage in “face-to-face” videoconferencing. Web-based meetings are helping to enhance the company’s culture by affirming core values and communicating new developments.

Adobe Connect’s persistent meeting room capabilities make it quick and easy for Mrs. Fields to deliver meetings on the fly, which can be attended from laptops, mobile devices and smartphones. Recording features let stakeholders attend at any time, as convenient. Additionally, the company has expanded its market share by engaging and recruiting new franchisees through quarterly public webinars via Adobe Connect. Cost savings are also impressive — by decreasing travel time and expenses, Mrs. Fields is saving nearly $30,000 annually. To learn more about Mrs. Fields and its use of Adobe Connect, click here.

Stay in touch with us here and follow us on Twitter @AdobeConnect — we’ll continue to share successes, news and discuss a range of web conferencing topics.