Bookshelf v7.5: Using Chat Sessions While Conducting a Distance Learning Session

Using Chat Sessions While Conducting a Distance Learning Session

Siebel Distance Learning includes a chat feature that you can use to exchange brief text messages with a selected session participant or with everyone who is participating in the session. You can use these messages to do the following:

Solicit questions or answers from students in an online classroom

Hold private or group conversations during a session

Exchange text, such as SQL strings and program commands, which can be cut and pasted into other programs

Converse with users who have access to only a single phone line, and who are using that line for a modem connection

When you are presenting a Siebel Distance Learning session, attendees may find it confusing to see a chat dialog box as part of what is transmitted from your computer, because the transmitted chat dialog box looks very similar to their local chat dialog boxes. To address this issue, Distance Learning offers you the following options:

Pause transmission while using the Online Chat dialog box. By default, if you are presenting, Distance Learning pauses transmission from the Capture Frame when you open the Online Chat dialog box. When you close the Online Chat dialog box, transmission automatically resumes.

Display Online Chat dialog box to attendees. At your request, Distance Learning allows the Online Chat dialog box to be transmitted to attendees as part of the display inside the Capture Frame on the presenting computer.

The following procedure describes how to use the chat dialog box.

To exchange text messages during a session using the chat dialog box

From the Distance Learning menu, choose View > Chat or click the Chat icon on the Distance Learning toolbar or double-click a user name in the User List to display that user's Personal Info settings, then click Chat.

The Online Chat dialog box appears.

Select a value from the Send Chat drop-down list.

You can select one session participant to chat with or you can select Everyone to send your message to all session participants.

Type your chat message in the text field at the bottom of the chat dialog box, and then click Send to transmit it to your intended recipient or recipients.

The text of your message appears in the upper area of your chat dialog box, labelled with your user name. If you have designated only one recipient, the label also includes the user name of the recipient and indicates that the message was private.

If you want to save a text record of your chat exchange, click Start Saving Text.

The Save As dialog box appears. Designate a file to contain the text of the chat and click OK.

In the chat dialog box, the Start Saving Text button is replaced by a Stop Saving Text button that you can click at any time to stop saving chat text. Text is saved only if it is sent or received when Start Saving Text is active. Any text sent or received when Start Saving Text is not active will not be saved, even if it is visible on the screen when you click Start Saving Text.

If your recipients have their chat dialog boxes open, your message appears in the upper area of each of their chat dialog boxes, as well as the upper area of your chat dialog box.

Depending on their personal preferences settings, if your recipients do not have their chat dialog box open, each of their screens may briefly display a small Incoming Chat dialog box that indicates you are trying to chat with them. They can click Chat to open their chat dialog boxes and start chatting with you, or they can click Ignore to close the dialog box without replying.

NOTE: In a custom session, the administrator may limit the attendees' access to chat.

NOTE: History of the chat sessions are saved on the server automatically as an Attachment for the session. In order to delete this file, you need to enter a password, Admin.