Adobe Connect Blog

Our newly released Adobe Connect Mobile 2.0 offers new and unlimited possibilities to take your web meetings to new levels.  This week we will take a look at how you can multi-screen your meetings.

One of the key trend in the digital home is multi-screen entertainment.  You can watch TV, but at the same time from a tablet or smartphone, chat or tweet with others watching the same program, or look-up some information about the players in the game or actors in the movie watched.

The same can now be done with Adobe Connect.  Log into your meeting from both your PC and your tablet for example  (Adobe Connect allows you to log as multiple hosts).  Set-up the meeting layout and manage the participants from the PC.  Control the slide changes from either the PC or your tablet.  But as soon as whiteboarding is required, use your tablet to whiteboard over the slides you uploaded from your PC.  You no longer need specialized equipment like a Wacom tablet to really be able to write complex math equations or draw complex objects faster: your finger (or a stylus) and a tablet will do the trick.

This opens a lot of brand new possibilities to take whiteboarding to a brand new level and make it much more useful to present information instead of relying to slides.

Happy whiteboarding everyone !

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)

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.

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.

Much recent discussion about web conferencing on this blog has centered on the extensibility of Adobe Connect and how our open approach to product development over time has delivered a rich, flexible solution that integrates well with other systems while solving real world challenges for wide range of customers.

Along this theme, many enterprises with particular requirements for security and compliance – especially those in government or highly regulated industries (e.g. financial services) – have turned to virtualization solutions to simplify desktop and application management, and ultimately increase control and security (the IT crowd loves this).

A lot of organizations have turned to VMware for these reasons. With VMware View (VMware VDI), desktop administrators virtualize the operating system, applications and user data to deliver desktops to end-users. Centralized automated management of these components increases control and improves business agility while providing a flexible, high-performance desktop experience, across a variety of network conditions.

Adobe and VMware teamed up to validate Adobe Connect 8 on VMware View 4.6 with the following goals:

• Verify that the Adobe Connect client can launch web-based meetings successfully from a VMware View desktop
• Verify that participants can view shared screens and documents with high quality
• Verify that multiple VMware View desktop sessions running on the same host can simultaneously present

The validation took place at VMware’s labs in Palo Alto in August.

Whitepaper

A joint white paper has been issued that describes the testing carried out jointly by VMware and Adobe. “Validating Adobe Connect Client on VMWare® View Desktops” provides technical considerations for running an Adobe Connect client in VMWare View desktops in order to participate in Adobe Connect web-based meetings. It also offers best practice recommendations for successful deployments:

• You can download the white paper from Adobe here.
• Alternately, you can download it from VMware here.

Stay in touch with us here and on Twitter @AdobeConnect – we’ll continue to share news and views on a range of web conferencing topics.

-Sanjay Agrawal, Senior Product Manager

Recently, award-winning computer graphics firm SYNQ Studios used Adobe Connect to deliver highly interactive, media-rich webinars to audiences around the globe. Working with the organizers of Cairo Media And Entertainment Trends Fair And Forum (CAIROMET), SYNQ Studios produced a series of webinars from its offices in Miami, involving graphic-design experts onsite in Cairo, who presented to more than 300 graphic-design professionals attending the sessions in-person. Concurrently, the webinar capabilities of Adobe Connect enabled more than 600 attendees from five continents to participate remotely in the dynamic lectures. Check out the video:

The dependability and stability of Adobe Connect enabled SYNQ Studios producers to support high-resolution visual media without dropped frames or quality loss, while the ability to quickly customize rooms and presentation layouts enhanced the experience for presenters. Adobe Connect provided a lively, engaging experience for the audience – regardless of location – helping them connect with presenters via interactive webinar features including split screens, polling, motion graphics, videos, live chats and webcams. On-demand recordings of the sessions enabled participants to view all of the event content at their convenience.

Due to their success with CAIROMET, SYNQ Studios is excited about developing new webinar initiatives. To read more about their use of Adobe Connect, click here.  

Stay in touch with us here and on Twitter @AdobeConnect as we continue to share stories, news and views on a wide range of web conferencing topics.

In our recent discussion about web conferencing and extensibility, we’ve talked about real-world users – including California State University Chancellor’s Office, New Horizons Computer Learning Centers and Tat Communication – who are realizing value by extending the Adobe Connect platform and using our custom extensions.

One way this is happening is by incorporating custom meeting pods: specialized, in-meeting applications (pods) that are either built by our own product folks, partners or external developers.  Our published software development kits (see: Adobe Connect Developer Center) let developers create new and interesting pods that can live natively within Adobe Connect – this capability is entirely unique, increasing capabilities that address specific needs and interests and making web meetings more engaging.

In this post, I’ll demonstrate how easy it is to integrate extensions into an Adobe Connect meeting room.

Demo: Personalize Meeting Rooms

I’ve created a demo that shows how easy it is to start leveraging the extensibility of Adobe Connect by adding custom pods to your meeting room – check it out:

There is more information, including currently available custom pods, at our extensions and integrations page here.

Get Started

Screen sharing is not really collaborating, which is why, over time, we’ve focused on the flexibility of Adobe Connect. The ability to integrate custom pods and customize meeting rooms gives our customers a great advantage – we encourage you to experiment with many of our free custom pods such as the popular TwitterConnect.

It’s still early, but we’re definitely expecting great creativity from developers, and more engaging and useful meetings for all.

Stay in touch with us here and on Twitter @AdobeConnect as we continue to share news and views on extensibility and a wide range of web conferencing topics.

-Peter Ryce, Senior Technical Evangelist (@PeterRyce)

I frequently get asked how to better engage participants during Adobe Connect presentations. My answer is always –EMOTICONS  – icons participants can click on to express emotions that appear next to their names in the attendee list. These emoticons can express laughter or applause, ask the host to speak louder or slow down, or show raised hands. They’re a great way for presenters to engage an audience during a live meeting.

The emoticon “Raise Hand” feature is a way for participants to ask for microphone rights during a VoIP meeting. If a host acknowledges an attendee’s raised hand by “accepting” it, that allows the participant voice rights.

A great product legacy story is when I first began hosting web meetings in Adobe Connect—and before the emoticons were part of the product—participants used to “clap” by typing “………” in the chat pod. Today, we’ve made expressing emotions during a meeting much more fun, I think.

If you haven’t, give emoticons a try in your next meeting. And let us know what emoticons you’d like to see in Adobe Connect next.

-Amy Brooks, Adobe Connect Event Producer

The new Adobe Connect 8 compatible MP3 Player extension is now available for download from the Adobe Connect Exchange. The MP3 player is a small Adobe Flash file (SWF) that streams royalty-free music into your Adobe Connect web conferencing room.

Created by our own Alistair Lee (@alistairlee), the MP3 Player allows participants to change the music track and raise or lower volume.  A new set of host controls can allow synchronous play while participants can still control their own volume. The MP3 is one of our more popular extensions and is most commonly placed in a lobby layout of an Adobe Connect meeting room. Playing the MP3 is an excellent way for participants to adjust their speaker levels and confirm they are correctly receiving an audio stream prior to the start time of a meeting.

The Adobe Connect MP3 Player can be downloaded in the Adobe Connect Exchange here.

And you can download instructions and information on how to change the song playlist here.

–Amy Brooks (@ConnectSupport)