Web conferencing

In a web conference or online meeting understood to be organized over the Internet and executed "virtual" meetings between participants who may be at very different places real. In place of the real conference table occurs, the PC desktop of the session moderator at a web conference.

All participants can in a window on their screen what is happening on the PC desktop of the presenter track ( " desktop sharing " ) - for example, holding a presentation, the idea of ​​a software or editing a text document. During the web conference can be changed the role of the moderator flexible between the participants ( and your desktop). So they follow the essential characteristic of location-based sessions in which - in contrast for example to lectures - a dialogue among many taking place ( " many-to -many " principle).

To increase the interactivity or the implementation of online workshops web conferences to Electronic Meeting Systems ( EMS) can be added. EMS extend the functionality of a web conference with tools such as brainstorming, voting and discussions that can be performed anonymously, as a rule, as well as a full-text documentation. They also allow the asynchronous pre-and postprocessing of the online meetings.

In contrast to the Web conference in which two to approximately 20 participants collaborate on documents and share applications, webinars are primarily used for online training (so-called " e-learning " ) or, for example, online press conferences. To them have as many as several hundred people, in exceptional cases even thousands. For webinar tools functional, the role of the lecturer in the foreground ( "one- to-many " principle).

With video conferencing is the transmission of live video streams of the participants or the distributed conference rooms in the foreground.

Basic principle of web conferencing

Web conferencing function in substantially according to the principle: The organizer sends an e -mail invitation with a link and an access code for web conferencing. At the time of the meeting, all participants in the web conference login, wherein the input of the access code is required. The participants then see the organizer screen and can on its PC View or share documents and applications. During the meeting may be changed at any time to the desktop of another user. For most web conferencing solutions can also mouse and keyboard control for the PC whose desktop look all participants, controlled between the participants are switched.

Installation: Hosted Services versus in-house server

Online meeting solutions can be installed in two versions: as a hosted service or in-house server. With a hosted service, the server is the web conference provider and the customer pays a fee. In contrast to the hosted server users may at some vendors purchase a server license and install the web conferencing software on an in- company communication server. This variant is preferred by companies with high security requirements and heavy use.

Functionalities

Today's web conferencing systems provide a number of functionalities that will make cooperation and conducting meetings effectively.

  • Platform independence: Web Meetings for Windows, OS X, Linux, Solaris, BSD Unix operating systems. Support (usually restricted) from mobile devices
  • Share applications
  • File Sharing
  • Transmission of mouse and keyboard control to individual or all participants
  • Change the role of the lecturer ( changing to representation of another PC desktops )
  • Marking and drawing tools
  • Whiteboard
  • Annotation of documents with PDF export
  • PDF download of documents which are shown at the presentation stage.
  • Chat: Chat moderated and unmoderierter
  • Video and VoIP audio
  • Conference call feature is integrated through other providers ( calls from participants by phone) or VoIP
  • Protocol functions
  • Recording of web meetings, in particular the "Playback " feature that allows to record training and as often as you play seminar in a "live ".
  • Webmeeting -to- podcast function, the recorded web meetings on iPod and AppleTV stores and plays ( spreed.com )
  • Functions for simultaneous translation
  • Scan-to- Present: scan documents and present immediately in the web meeting
  • Presentation of Office documents, especially PowerPoint and PDF documents without screen sharing (this only works if the presenter has uploaded the documents to the service provider on the server ).
  • Zoom for documents, drawings, pictures and video. Documents are displayed vectorized. This allows documents without significant time delay increases for all participants and will be reduced. The vectorization allows in particular the immediate size -independent representation of medical images ( X-rays, CT) and CAD drawings.
  • Time-synchronous presentations of videos in formats such as podcasts, QuickTime, MPEG -2/ 4 or AVI ( spreed.com )
  • Customizable e- mail invitations, integration with various e -mail clients to send out invitation emails
  • Split -screen video for Many- to-many meetings with many participants
  • Call-out conference call. "Out Calls", that is, Telephony Features for the calling subscribers of a web meeting out ( spreed.com eg, tevia.de )
  • Call- In Conference Call: Calling a phone number in order to participate by dialing in to a joint conference call. This feature is supported by a variety of vendors.

Security

For most software solutions and services for Web conferencing, data exchange with SSL 128 - bit encrypted. In addition, there are also offered by encrypting the data transfer with 256-bit Advanced Encryption Standard or AES.

License models

The provider of online meeting solutions offer a number of different license models:

  • Free web meetings, usually restricted
  • Prepaid and postpaid web meetings ( variety of payment models: Monthly flat rate or payment per user plus annual fee )
  • Pay -per-use license ( Billing by minute per participant )
  • Purchase of conferencing systems

Basically, the user can distinguish between two licensed products:

  • Single License (suitable for self-employed and small businesses )
  • "Corporate " license ( for larger companies)

At Corporate licenses or more individual licenses several Web conferences can be carried out simultaneously. In addition, multi-user solutions offer advanced administration functionality: administrators the ability to manage licenses centrally defining feature releases per user and make detailed reports for use.

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