Adobe Connect Blog

By Guillaume Privat, Director Product Management, Adobe Connect

A year ago, we launched the Adobe Connect ideas website to capture your inputs on what we should build in the product.  So far the feed-back has been great and we have already implemented many ideas in our C8, C8.1 and C8.2 releases.  Some ideas however are a better fit for 3rd party developers leveraging our SDK.

We have added categories and statuses to the idea site to help surface these ideas.  So whether you are a developer in search of inspiration to create a custom pod, or would like to submit custom pod ideas, read on for some suggestion on how to do this.

Adding a custom pod idea

Say you are a user of Adobe Connect and have an idea for a potential extension, for instance an Angry Birds collaborative pod: just log to the Adobe Connect Idea site with your Adobe ID, create a new idea by clicking on “post idea”.  Fill in the title and the description and select the category “custom pod”.  Submit.  Look at responses from the community on your idea. Simple and easy.

Viewing suggested ideas

If you are a developer in search of inspiration, the Adobe Connect ideas website can provide that inspiration.  Go the ideas site, and on the right side panel filter by either category = “custom pod” or status = “For SDK developer”.  Review the idea and post comments (you will need to log in using your Adobe ID to do so) to request more feedback on the idea.

To vote on my Angry Bird idea, vote here !

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)