Adobe Connect Blog

The Adobe Event Services team, of which I’m part, has produced thousands of Adobe Connect events over time. In parallel, we’ve built up what we consider a proven list of best practices for successful online meetings of all sizes. Following are a few of my favorites, but you can check out the entire list here. We think incorporating these ideas into your everyday meetings will help result in successful experiences for you and your participants.

Wireless and Web Collaboration

Something we repeatedly suggest is to hard wire into the fastest internet connection possible. The reason for this is sometimes wireless connectivity has pauses or is slow and can cause participants to have audio pauses or make video choppy. If participants complain of choppy audio or content not showing, suggest they hard wire into the internet, if at all possible, and their experience will most likely improve.

VoIP Considerations

It is important to note that VoIP utilizes the internet to transmit audio. If you choose this option it is always recommended you plug directly into your network connection, rather than use wireless and be on the highest bandwidth connection possible. The connection speed of meeting participants also determines their VoIP experience so those on slower connections might experience drop off’s or time delays, called latency, when listening to audio.

Create a “lobby” Layout

Most people use email reminders with their Adobe Connect events to remind participants when a meeting is on the horizon. By nature, once that reminder pops up, participants naturally click on the URL to enter the session. It’s best to plan for participants entering about 15 minutes prior to start time by creating a layout, called a lobby, where participants will know they have correctly accessed the webcast and can hear audio. This is a great area to provide meeting room best practices, information about your company, product or service, a list of upcoming online meetings or perhaps polling questions to learn more about your participants. If you are using VoIP, it’s a good idea to include an MP3 player visual so participants will also know they can hear audio.

Again, these are just a few of our best practice tips. For a longer list of ways to consider improving your online meetings, visit our best practices document here. We’re interested in yours, too, so please share in comments.

And for the latest Adobe Connect news and updates, follow us on Twitter at @AdobeConnect. Or for your Adobe Connect support-related questions, you can find us at @ConnectSupport

Amy Brooks, Adobe Connect Event Producer

By Paresh Kharya, Product Manager, Adobe Connect

With Adobe Connect 8 we have made significant progress in improving the accessibility of the product. Our objective is not just to become the market’s most compliant web conferencing solution for accessibility standards but also the most usable by users with disabilities.

Some of the key accessibility improvements that we made in version 8 are:

Screen reader support

Adobe Connect 8 meeting interface supports screen readers. The benchmark that we used for developing and testing this support is JAWS 11. The meeting interface provides users who are blind or visually impaired the information that is needed to be able to participate effectively in Adobe Connect meetings.

Keyboard navigation

Adobe Connect 8 interface is easily navigable by keyboard. Users can use Ctrl + space to navigate through the main menu, Ctrl+F6 to navigate through the pods, Ctrl+F8 to access the contextual pod menu and tab to move between options within a pod. A quick demo of navigating an Adobe Connect meeting using keyboard is available on AdobeTV.

Apart from making the interface navigable via the keyboard we have also provided direct shortcuts for common functionality. These direct shortcuts will enable faster and efficient interaction with the interface. Common tasks having direct shortcuts include attendee management, starting/stopping a recording, turning microphone on/off, starting/stopping screen sharing, navigating shared content, entering chat text, etc. The complete list of keyboard shortcuts is available from the help menu on the top right corner of the meeting interface.

Real time captioning pod

We are also working on releasing an updated version of the real time captioning pod for our users. The Adobe Connect closed captioning pod is aimed at ensuring full participation in online Adobe Connect meetings and webinars by participants who are deaf or hard of hearing. It allows connection to professional captioning providers such as Caption Colorado, the Media Access Group at WGBH, and CaptionFirst. The enhancements in the updated version include more options for subscribing to captioning systems, individual control over caption font size and contrast, and the ability for participants to rewind and fast forward. Expect more information from us on this soon.

We remain committed to supporting various accessibility related standards. For a detailed assessment of our compliance to section 508 of the US Rehabilitation Act please refer to our voluntary product accessibility template.

We continue to work on improving the accessibility of Adobe Connect and ensuring that Adobe Connect remains the easiest to use solution for all users. We’d love to hear from you on what amongst the new accessibility improvements is working for you, what you would like us to do more or differently.

The Connect Pro team released today three new whitepapers addressing key topics of interest for its hosted and licensed customers. A first set of documents provide an updated security assessment for Connect Pro 7.5; another whitepaper focuses on our support for virtualized server environments.
Security – Collaborate in trust with Connect Pro

Leading organizations are increasingly using realtime collaboration tools, such as Connect Pro, to increase employee productivity and optimize their costs of doing business. While enhanced business velocity is the primary objective, systems security, data integrity and privacy protection are vital imperatives for systems administrators.

Adobe has for long acknowledged that software applications and services must be delivered in a secure and reliable fashion. As part of this commitment to transparency, Adobe released today an updated version of its security reports (one for its SaaS platform, one for its premise-based software). The new documents can be found at: http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobatconnectpro/whitepapers/

Customers will find that, from design to systems deployment, Connect Pro implements best practices for software security at all stages of its engineering development and operations. All Connect Pro application components, whether delivered as a service or licensed software, go through a rigorous process of validation, conducted side-by-side by Adobe’s dedicated, in-house security team and third-party security experts.

In addition to the techniques employed to ensure communications encryption and protection against security exploits, it is important to note that Connect Pro also offers leading features for compliance and control. They give systems administrators a tighter control over the functionality accessible to end-users and are useful to mitigate the risk of accidental sharing of sensitive information and ensure alignment with internal and regulatory policies. More details can be found in a tutorial published on our community website, at www.connectusers.com.
 

Virtualization – Optimize resources with Connect Pro

Server virtualization is becoming the norm across many data centers. The overall level of virtualization has increased steadily over the past years and is widely seen as a valuable avenue for cutting costs and improving resource utilization in the data center.

Four main reasons are driving this uptake:

1. Server consolidation and data center optimization: by consolidating several workloads on a single, partitioned server and running them each in their own VM, more efficient utilization can be achieved while still allocating sufficient resources to execute each workload. This also allows for substantial savings on data center costs and space.
2. Business continuity: the deployment and management of applications on virtualization software offers more cost-efficient options for high availability, fault tolerance, and disaster recovery.
3. Encapsulation and isolation: by creating separate operating environments for multiple applications, virtualization technology mitigates the risk of conflict, facilitates the troubleshooting of runtime problems and achieve security isolation.
4. Dynamic utility computing: virtualization can turn previously discrete IT resources into an internal utility grid that saves energy, reduces cost and increases reliability.

To take advantage of the benefits of virtualized server architectures, Connect Pro 7.5 has been certified in a virtualized server environment running VMware ESX Server.

The new whitepaper, published at http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobatconnectpro/whitepapers/, offers benchmarks and data points about the application’s performance in a virtual environment, under different configurations (single server setup, clustered three-server setup). It was found that Connect Pro performed on par with an equivalent physical installation and that the user experience was comparable.

This whitepaper also advises customers on the best way to set up and configure Acrobat Connect Pro on VMware ESX Server.

By Vincent Toesca

Keeping colleagues and prospects engaged in your meetings is a common challenge. Through chat, breakout rooms, whiteboards, high quality video and more, Acrobat Connect Pro enables you to create high-impact online sessions. However, the distractions of upcoming summer activities and vacations may make it even more difficult for you to get your audience’s attention in the first place. So it is even more important to begin your meetings with highly engaging and interactive content.

Continue reading…

Because of the current economic conditions and the increased awareness of the impact of travel on the planet, many organizations are promoting virtual meetings as a replacement for face to face meetings. Yet, as people get more comfortable with web conferencing thanks to engaging tools like Connect Pro, they realize that both type of meetings are very complimentary and combined can effectively drive individual and group productivity.

Continue reading…

We are pleased to announce of the Online Professional Development Resource Center. This library of resources targeted at Connect Pro and Adobe Presenter users in K-12 education offers resources on how to use online professional development in a variety of ways.

While targeted at those in Elementary and Secondary Education, these resources can be used by any Connect Pro user. Whether you need to create and distribute on-demand professional development content, deliver live professional development sessions, or deliver a hybrid of both models, you’ll find help here.

>> Go to the Online Professional Development Resource Center

We have just launched the Connect Pro Best Practices User Group open to all users of the product around the world. The Connect Pro Best Practices User Group was created by Adobe as a way to facilitate the sharing of product usage and implementation information to help the user community to maximize their product knowledge and ensure their Connect Pro implementation is a success.
Our inaugural meeting will be held via Connect Pro on October 30, 2008 at 12 PM Pacific where Eric Lerner of Adobe will be presenting on: Lessons Learned – Rolling out Connect Pro Meeting at Adobe
To learn more or to join the Best Practices User Group visit: http://www.connectusers.com/groups/bestpractices/

Continue reading…

Another great tip from one of our resident Connect Pro experts, Jason Parker!
Have you ever had the brief panic attack when switching back and forth between a presentation and desktop share (or video) only to have the presentation reload on the first slide then “catch up” to the last slide you were on?
Fortunately there’s an easy and quick way to eliminate the slide “catch up” effect. Simply include your presentation on every layout. This will keep your slides in sync throughout your meeting. Note: You can hide your presentation behind other pods…see this screen shot:
http://my.adobe.acrobat.com/hidepod/
To conceal the presentation pod, simply select the pod you’d like to overlap it with by clicking on the title bar which will bring it to the front. To verify your presentation pod is hidden, select Pods from the menu option and verify your pod name has a checkmark next to it.
It’s that simple!
JP

A great tip for Mac users from one of our super power users here at Adobe, Jason Parker…
Nowadays presentations are becoming more complex with dynamic movie backgrounds, embedded videos,
and flashy builds. Unfortunately presentations created in Keynote (Apple’s equivlant to PowerPoint) are not
upload compatible with Acrobat Connect Pro yet. Keynote does offer an export to PPT option, however often times
text is reformatted, slide builds and transitions are lost or inconsistent, and there is no option to embed
videos.
At a recent event we supported all of the presentations were in Keynote and included embedded videos.
The challenge we faced was maintaining the original look and feel of the uploaded the
presentation and playing the embedded videos.
Following our best practices, we created our Connect Pro room layouts to reflect the meeting agenda along with
an additional layout for the videos. We layered/stacked the Share pods in the order in which they were to
be played in on the “videos” layout. During the event we switched between the presenters layout to the
videos layout in sync with the live presentation mimicking the Keynote version.
Here’s a quick summary of the conversion process we used to convert the Keynote presentations (and
videos) to an upload compatible (PPT) Acrobat Connect Pro format.
Please note: PowerPoint for Mac does not have the same import features as the Windows PowerPoint
application. For this process we used a MacBook Pro with Keynote ’08 and Office 2007 (installed on
VMware running Windows XP).
1. From Keynote select File -> Export and select the Image option. Select ‘PNG (high quality)’ and
check the ‘Create an image for each stage of builds’ option (Mac side).
2. Create a New Folder to copy the files into and select Export.
3. The .MOV files will be saved to a sub-folder in your newly created export folder. Alternatively
you can select ‘Show Package Contents’ from the Keynote file cut out the .MOV files.
4. Copy newly created folder and files to a PC for importing.
5. From PowerPoint select ‘Insert Photo Album’ choose ‘Insert picture from File/Disk – browse to
the folder you exported the PNGs to and select Ctrl+A then to insert/import the PNG files
then click Create.
6. Review the newly created slides removing extra transitions/slide duplicates.
7. To reduce the file size click on a picture/image in the presentation then select ‘Picture Tools’ from
the menu options then click on ‘Compress Pictures’. Under options select 96ppi and delete
cropped areas.
8. After compressing – save and close, then upload the PPT to the Connect content folder or Connect
meeting room.
Using a video conversion application such as Flash Video Encoder convert the video(s) from .MOV to
.FLV. Upload the files to the Acrobat Connect content folder or Connect meeting room.

An entry from Jason Parker, one of our internal Connect Pro seminar gurus…
How many of us have been distracted while watching a demonstration or sharing our screens by a little message pop-up (also known as a toast).
There is an easy way to disable this occasional nuisance. Select Pod options for the Chat pod and click on Disable Chat Notifications.
IMPORTANT: This setting will need to be selected for each person sharing/presenting as this setting is per Chat pod and on the individual (local) machine(s).
If you are using multiple Chat pods you will need to adjust this preference for each pod. If you are using the Q&A pod linked to the Chat pod it works the same, however you need to select the Disable Chat Notifications option before linking. If you forgot to disable notifications you can unlink (Pod options on the Q&A pod) select the disable option and re-link without loosing your Q&A Chat history.