One of the things I hear comment on from time to time is that the share pod in Adobe Acrobat Connect Pro just lists things and holds onto stuff. Well that’s true. It’s actually a great feature that most of us take for granted in that we can upload a ppt file, an image, some flash paper content or a custom pod and whether we return tomorrow, next week or next month the content is still there. Unless you implicitly delete it off the server or remove the content using the “Organize pods” feature under the pods menu to delete the content there.
That is really what I am going talk about here. That fun little menu choice “Organize pods” located under the Pods menu in the main UI of your Connect meeting room. Here you can not only “Delete” content, “Select Unused” content but “Rename” content and renaming things can help Hosts and Presenters alike in a meeting room. By default content you have loaded in the share pod is listed in alphabetical order but often I (and more often than not someone using my room or co-presenting with me) want to have things displayed in a logical order that matches the presentation I have outlined on paper or the order in which I have the content and presentation ordered in my mind.
I have found the best way is to go into the “Organize pods” dialog box, select the content, select “Rename” and add a #1 or #2 and so on to the front of the content items; especially useful if your PowerPoint files have similar names of titles or if you have multiple presenter or speakers. This forces the numbered ppt files to appear at the top of the list in the Share pod when you load them using the “What do you want to share? – Documents” accordion menu. I also tend to put a blank space, or two, in front of any file that I use in the share pod that might serve as the first item, welcome slide or such item that needs to be the first thing attendees see when they enter that layout. This is especially useful when someone else in using the room and making the same or similar presentation or if you have a newbie whose comfort level with Connect is not as high as yours.
So simple yet and yet so easy a way to keep your content, your presenter’s content and all the various files you upload into the share pod organized. So don’t just upload “stuff” and have it listed there take a few seconds and put some order to the material. It may save you minutes down the road and make all your meetings all the better.
Often when using a Connect meeting room or attending a meeting it astounds me how often a meeting host or presenter will underutilize the pods. There are only eight basic or standard pods and of course you can make your own pods that do wonderful things or download pods from the Adobe Exchange for Connect to impact your meeting room or how the attendees interact in the room. But the eight basic pods offer you an opportunity to expand attendee interaction in a meeting and provide attendees direction even when you are not there live.
If you did not know you can double-click the title bar of any pod and re-name the pod. Simple, select the title bar with your mouse, move your mouse over the current title and double click to highlight the current title, hit the delete key or just start typing a new title. Okay but why? This question is what you may be asking right now so let me explain.
Pods are great for their functionality and performance in a meeting but they are kind of generic. Share, Attendee list, File share and so on. If you take the time to think about the nature of your meeting room and the context of how it will be used for communication and collaboration by your attendees you can make the room perhaps a little easier for newbies to understand and maybe easier to navigate for those in a hurry. Is your meeting live? Is your meeting going to be recorded? Is your meeting room open 24×7 for people to enter? Are the attendees new to the Connect Meeting room experience? Let’s take the scenario of new employee hires who are also new Connect users entering a meeting room for the first time for an employee orientation session.
As you know a participant in the meeting room sees things a bit differently than meeting Hosts or Presenters and as participants they cannot use all the pods the same way so right from the beginning a newbie might start clicking on the pods just to see what happens. If you were to re-label some of the pods they could provide some guidance even if you are not in the meeting room or have walked away for a moment before your meeting begins. I often re-label the chat pod “Type your questions here” so that it is obvious what you can do with this pod during the meeting. I also add or enter into the chat pod the text “Welcome” and “Please type any question, concerns or comments you have during a meeting into this pod”.
The share pod is another pod that is great to re-name or label. If you have a photograph of yourself or the presenter for the session upload that into the meeting room and then re-label the pod with their name, title, credentials or contact information. In this scenario I often see people re-label the pod “Representative”, “Live Representative” or “Customer representative” I think you get the idea here. Label this picture whatever makes sense in the context of your meeting room and makes a personal connection to the meeting attendees especially if you are not using the “Camera and Video” pod. I also add#1 or #2 to the front of the name of any content I put in a meeting room that corresponds to the sequence of how that material is to be displayed. This helps me keep things in order and if others use my room they can see the numbered lists too
The pod with the title that I change 99% of the time in every meeting when I use that pod is the “File Share” pod. Why? Well the share pod and file share pod both have the word share in their title but share content in entirely different ways. The “Share” pod is a great way to upload specific file types or select a window, application or your desktop and broadcast that content out to all the attendees in the meeting room. The “File Share” pod is a great way to distribute files of any type to anyone in the meeting room or even to those with access to the meeting archive. I re-name the “File Share” the “Distribution pod”. Often giving it a much longer name like: “Distribution pod: select any of the files below by clicking on them and selecting the Save to my Computer button”. You get the idea this is a nice way to provide direction to newbies in the meeting room and to anyone who may be accessing the meeting room archive long after the meeting has ended.
A fairly simple idea and concept that can provide guidance and instruction to meeting room attendees. You can also rename pods using the “Organize Pods…” menu at the bottom of the Pods drop-down menu. You can also rename layouts or create new layouts with the “Organize Layouts…” option under the Layouts drop-down menu. The most important aspect of re-naming things is to keep the names contextual as to how they might be used in the meeting. Establish a naming convention and stick to it and in my opinion avoid “blank” or “no name” pods. While possible it makes it real difficult to find the right pod if you close it especially if you have more than one blank pod.
So what’s in a name? A whole lot so use them wisely.
ConnectSolutions and Adobe recently partnered to deliver webinars to the Life Sciences market showcasing the ConnectYou.me solution. Life Science organizations are being forced to rapidly change the way they engage with healthcare professionals (doctors) in order to stay competitive in today’s economic market and in this 30 minute webinar I was able to not only speak to those challenges and scenarios but demonstrate how ConnectYou.me can and is being used to deliver better customer engagement experiences.
While these webinars were tightly focused on the Life Science market the scenario and workflow easily applies to so many other organizations – financial services, high-tech, government, manufacturing and many more.
Perhaps the two best questions during the webinar were: 1) Will this work on my Adobe hosted Connect account? Yes, as a matter of fact ConnectYou.me works with any Adobe Acrobat Connect Professional deployment and 2) Does it require any software installation? No. ConnectYou.me is based on the Adobe Flash Platform and as such leverages the already installed Flash Player residing on 99% of the world internet connected PCs.
We would like to thank Adobe Systems, all the participants that took some time out of their day to attend this seminar. Keep an eye on our website and Adobe’s for other upcoming webinars and events.
If you would like to see one of the Life Science webinars you can click on the link below and view the recorded archive.
http://seminars.adobe.acrobat.com/p70165470/
On occasion when using your Connect account you will go to the Camera and Voice pod to launch your camera and you get the “gray man” icon even though your camera is plugged in and you know you have used your camera with Connect meeting rooms before. So what might have happened to cause your camera not to work? Remember you can use the pod even if you do not have a camera connected to your computer; perhaps you just want to use the VoIP feature and you have left the camera option on under the pod settings for the Camera and Voice pod.
Whether on a Macintosh, Linux or Windows computers often the same type of activities can impact your camera, the flash player and your meeting room. First, double check that the camera is plugged in to the appropriate port whether it is USB, firewire or you are using a dedicated video card or third-party adapter.
In no particular order there are things we do as a matter of using our computers that may impact your camera not working properly or as expected in a meeting room and none of these common errors are so catastrophic that you cannot recover.
1. Have you recently upgraded your computer operating system or have you installer recent patched or upgrades to the operating system? If so you probably just need to restart you computer after completely shutting it down. This often just clears and cleans things in computer memory and cleans up things on the OS.
2. Have you recently installed or updated other program that might use your camera? A lot of IM clients (like Skype, AIM and so forth) or other video application that allows you to stream or record video to a website or application can request use of the camera during the installation process and of course when you use the camera in that application. If that happened that program may still have control over the camera and the camera driver. When that happens the Flash Player that is running you Connect meeting may ask for the camera and may not be able to grab the video driver and use it for the Connect meeting. The solution is to close your meeting room, go into that other applications/s and check the preferences to release the camera and then re-launch your meeting. If that other application is running in the background when you use Connect your camera can only be grabbed/used by one application at a time and that other application grabbed the Camera before Connect did. In this case close your Connect meeting. Switch to that other application and quit that application and re-launch your Connect meeting room.
3. Have you recently upgraded your camera or the drivers used by your camera? If you have you may need to check that your camera and driver are compatible with your OS and that you have the most current video driver for your particular camera. Rarely a camera driver upgrade can cause a camera not to work. The solution to this is to check your camera and drivers for compatibility for your OS and launch your meeting room.
Often times just closing a meeting room and re-launching the room is enough. Sometimes you need to close and restart the browser. On rare occasions you have to re-start the entire computer. Checking you Flash player setting can help too.
If you have the “gray man” icon in your Camera and Voice pod check your flash player setting for the web camera by following these steps. In your Connect meeting room go to the Camera and Voice pod and click the start camera button. If the “gray man” appears move your mouse over the head of the gray man and right click (or as appropriate for your OS) and the Flash player menu will appear. From that menu choose “Settings…” when the Flash Player setting dialog appears click on the web camera tab; it should be the far right tab closest to the close button. On the web camera tab you will see a drop down menu and from that drop down menu make sure you have selected your camera from the list. There is also a big blue box with a web camera on it on the far left of the dialog box. Go ahead and click on the blue box with the web camera on it and you should see yourself or whatever your web camera is pointing to. You can do this at any time to make sure your camera is working properly not just when you might have an issue. Once you have done this and you see yourself in what was the blue box you are all set simply close the Flash Player settings dialog box by clicking the close button. Close the Camera and Voice pod and open a new Camera and Voice pod and click the start button once again.
You should now see your camera in the Camera and Video pod and be able to share your smile through all your Connect meetings.
