9
Web Conferencing Sites

9.1 Overview

As an enterprise class platform for real-time collaboration, Oracle Web Conferencing allows a single deployment instance to be configured easily to meet the requirements of various lines of business (LOB). This objective can be achieved by creating individual sites and customizing system, application, and conference level properties.

Web Conferencing sites are created by the business administrator. For every site created, the integrating application or line of business uses a unique authentication token along with the site ID to communicate with the Web Conferencing Application. Creating a site provides the following benefits:

• Customized system, application, and conference properties.
• Support for custom integrated flows which can bypass the Web Conferencing Application.
• Support for custom Web Conferencing Console behavior based on the properties set for the site.
• Site-level reports which give the same depth and breakdown of data as the global Web Conferencing site reports.
• Custom user interfaces, including a separate Oracle Web Conferencing prelogin application page with full support for listing public conferences only for the specific site.
• Custom branding to uniquely identify the integrating site/line of business.

The global site is pre-created and cannot be deleted. By default, all users belong to site "iMeeting," which is a global site. However, a user can belong to more than one site.

9.2 Site ID

In an enterprise, a single deployment of the Real-Time Collaboration system can be used by various LOB applications. These integrating applications are called sites. An identifier for such an integrating application is called a site ID. The Real-Time Collaboration system uses the concept of site to provide a customized "view" of the Oracle Web Conferencing deployment, for each of the integrating applications.

Applications in an enterprise can integrate with Oracle Web Conferencing in two ways:

• It can programmatically invoke Web Conferencing functionality using Oracle Real-Time Collaboration Integration Service calls or,
• If the application has a browser-based interface, it can invoke the Oracle Web Conferencing Application pages directly.

In either case, a site ID enables the Real-Time Collaboration system to provide a customized service for each integrating application.

9.2.1 Creating a Site

The Oracle Web Conferencing administrator can create a site by providing a unique site name, display name, and description for the site. The Real-Time Collaboration system then registers the site and provides the administrator with a site ID and an authentication token, both of which are system generated. An application that wants to integrate with the Real-Time Collaboration system can use the new site ID to make the appropriate calls. You can then set up site-specific properties to control the interaction of the integrating site with Oracle Web Conferencing. For all properties that you do not change, the values of the corresponding default Web Conferencing site apply.

9.2.2 Using a Site ID

For Oracle Real-Time Collaboration Integration Service calls, the site ID is passed as one of HTTP header fields in the HTTP request to invoke the service. For any application Web page that provides a link to the Oracle Web Conferencing Application page, it can provide the site ID as a URL parameter. For example, the following URL can be used to provide a customized view of Oracle Web Conferencing for site 123456.

http://<hostname>:<port-number>/imtapp/app/prelogin.uix?siteID=123456

Invoking this URL returns a page that has the look and feel and contents specified for site 12345. Also, any conferences created from the application pages will have the attributes defined for conferences for that site.

9.2.3 Customizing Site Properties

Once a site ID is created in the Oracle Real-Time Collaboration system, an administrator can set different site-level properties to customize its behavior for that site. There are two broad classes of properties:

• Application Properties: Change the look and feel of the Oracle Web Conferencing Application pages. Examples of such properties are the co-branding name that appears at the top of each application page, the e-mail address of the Contact Us page, the number of rows displayed for each table in the application page, and so on.
• Conference Properties: Change the attributes of any conference, whether it is invoked from the application pages or from the integration service calls. Examples of such properties include the Startup (collaboration) Mode of the conference, the availability of chat during the conference, and so on.

Figure 9-1 Site ID

Text description of the illustration site_id.gif

Figure 9-1, "Site ID" shows how the various property values in Oracle Web Conferencing are inherited and set. When a site is created, it inherits the default values of all the properties from the system settings. For each site the administrator can set various conference-level and application-level properties to override the default values. Some of the conference-level properties can be changed from inside the Web Conferencing Console when the conference is running. For example, the default setting for the system is to set the start mode of each conference to be Cobrowse mode. When a site is created, this default value is inherited for that site. The site administrator can override this default value by changing this property for that time to say Desktop Sharing mode.