I’m working on an update to the MeetingPulse application, using a pre-release version of the next beta milestone of the AIR SDK. The killer new feature in this next version is the ability to pop up notification alerts ("toasts"). What this means is that with the next version of MeetingPulse, you will be able to leave it running in the background, and then get an alert when someone comes into one of your meeting rooms. Not only that, but the alert includes the name and email address of the person who has just entered your room.
Very cool stuff. Look for an update soon!
We’re excited to see the interest from the Acrobat Connect community around MeetingPulse! Over 100 people have registered the application since we launched the beta a short time ago, and it has been great hearing how these users have benefited from it. If you haven’t had an opportunity to install the application yet, it’s available at: http://labs.connectsolutions.com
MeetingPulse users can be found across a variety of markets, including: Education, Government, Consulting, Telecommunications, and High-Tech. It is great to see the application adoption across this varied landscape, and we look forward to continuing to improve upon the application.
Please continue to send in your feature enhancements. We expect to provide an update (your app will let you know when its available…) as soon as the next release of AIR becomes available. First on the list of enhancements (which requires AIR Beta 2) is taskbar notifications (also known as “toasts”).
We’ve all experienced the dreaded loss of ten to fifteen minutes at the beginning of a virtual meeting to coordinate the various aspects of the meeting (audio conferencing, web conferencing, IM’ing people to see if they are going to join, etc…). Unfortunately, this churn often eliminates any potential productivity gains experienced with web conferencing. Guy, over at Burton Group, has a humorous if not painful, account of this happening to him as well. As I stated in my comments on his blog, MeetingPulse assists in reducing this churn, by providing desktop notifications when web conferencing participants join a conferencing room.
Here’s the original article:
Pattern Finder: Vendor Oops #1: Getting the Dial-In Number Wrong
Robin Good, who has extensive experience in evaluating web conferencing solutions, has produced a great review of Acrobat Connect Professional. Robin has been a fan of Acrobat Connect/Macromedia Breeze for many years, and it looks like the latest update doesn’t disappoint. If you are looking for a nice summary of the key features of Acrobat Connect Professional, than this is an excellent quick-read.
One area he didn’t touch on (I’ve left a comment on this as well) was the choice that customers have in deployment options with Acrobat Connect Professional. There are few products in the industry that support hosted and on-premise deployments, and of course, now with QuickConnect, a hybrid of those two options. This flexibility is important for customers, particularly as contextual collaboration becomes more standard for organizations adopting web conferencing.
Best Of Breed Web Conferencing, Online Collaboration And Live Web Presentation Into One Tool: Acrobat Connect Professional Reviewed – Robin Good’s Latest News
The next piece of the QuickConnect infrastructure that I want to focus on is the Agent. While the Control Center has a global view of all Connect instances, each Agent is responsible for monitoring and maintaining just one Connect instance. And so the Agent is critical to the value that we add over and above other Connect deployment options.
Here are some of the tasks that the Agent performs. First, it checks the health of its Connect instance every 15 seconds, and takes immediate action if Connect does not respond. Second, it performs regular database tuning and analysis for Connect. Third, it manages backups for Connect. Fourth, it does anti-virus scanning and intrusion analysis for its Connect instance. And those are only some of the things that the Agent does.
I’ll have more to say about the Agent in the coming weeks. Next up: remote monitoring.
