| Oracle® Web Conferencing Administrator's Guide Release 2 (2.0.4) Part Number B10877-01 |
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View PDF |
| Oracle® Web Conferencing Administrator's Guide Release 2 (2.0.4) Part Number B10877-01 |
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|
View PDF |
The Oracle Real-Time Collaboration system is a state-of-the-art, distributed system that offers real time collaboration services, including Web Conferencing. While this guide focuses on the administration and management of the Web Conferencing service, most of the components and administration tools that are involved in the providing this service are generic and will be used for other services in the future.
This chapter provides an overview of the Oracle Web Conferencing product, including its end-user collaboration features and administration features.
Oracle Web Conferencing brings real-time online collaboration to any enterprise, enabling customers, employees, teams, and partners to meet online within the context provided by the content, commerce, and comprehensive business flows of e-business.
Oracle Web Conferencing consists of client and server applications that let you create and participate in online conferences. Oracle Web Conferencing features multiple ways to collaborate in conferences, including desktop sharing, whiteboarding, chat, polling, and cobrowsing.
Oracle Web Conferencing contains the following real-time collaboration features:
Cobrowsing
Document Presentation
Whiteboarding
Desktop Sharing
Voice Streaming
Polling
Chat
Shared Control
Recording and Playback--Recording of voice synchronized with the on-screen data collaboration for on-demand playback of the conference.
In addition, Oracle Web Conferencing features the following:
Schedule a conference--Plan a conference in advance, send e-mail invitations, and designate materials to be reviewed before the conference.
Create an instant conference--Create a conference and host it right away.
Join a conference--Easily join a conference through an e-mail invitation (if the host has enabled this option), through the lists of conferences, or through the Join Meeting window.
Manage materials--Store conference materials such as documents, bookmarks, messages, and polls in your own repository. You can access your personal materials repository during conferences.
Participate in a conference--With the control delegation feature, the host can allow attendees to present content. Collaboration modes give you options for presenting Web pages, documents, images, and to draw on the whiteboard and share your desktop. With chat, participants can communicate with each other in real time.
Record a conference--Record a conference so that it can be played back anytime.
Publish archives--Publish the recorded conference and information about the conference, such as the public chat transcript, list of conference attendees, and conference duration.
Play back a conference--Play back archived conferences any time.
Oracle Web Conferencing is an option of Oracle Real-Time Collaboration. A fully functional Web Conferencing system is made up of different components, which are explained in the next section. For details on installing Oracle Real-Time Collaboration, including hardware and software requirements and installation prerequisites, please refer to the Oracle Collaboration Suite Installation and Configuration Guide for Solaris.
Text description of the illustration topology.gif
A basic Web Conferencing system consists of the following components:
When a user joins a conference, the Web Conferencing Console is downloaded if it is not already present on the user's computer or if the installed version is not current. Conferences take place in the Web Conferencing Console. Users access the Web Conferencing Console through Internet Explorer.
A grouping of Real-Time Collaboration components. Among the components are the Web Conferencing Server (imt-collab), the OC4J application (OC4J_imeeting), and the Oracle Real-Time Collaboration process monitor (imt-pm) and the Real-Time Collaboration mx. They work together to provide the core real-time collaboration functionality of Oracle Web Conferencing.
The Web Conferencing Console is downloaded from the Oracle Real-Time Collaboration Core Components instance.
As a prerequisite, the Oracle Real-Time Collaboration Core Components need an Oracle9iAS mid-tier that is configured to work with Oracle9iAS Single Sign-On and Oracle Internet Directory.
A grouping of Oracle Web Conferencing components that converts MS Office documents into HTML for viewing in Document Presentation mode. This grouping includes the Document Conversion Server component. It must be installed on a computer with Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office.
| See Also:
Oracle Collaboration Suite Installation and Configuration Guide for Solaris for details on prerequisites |
A grouping of Oracle Web Conferencing components that dials into a voice conferencing system, converts the analog voice to digital format, and streams it. This grouping includes the Voice Conversion Server component. It must be installed on a computer with Microsoft Windows and requires specialized telephony hardware and software.
| See Also:
Oracle Collaboration Suite Installation and Configuration Guide for Solaris for details on prerequisites |
The set of Oracle Real-Time Collaboration database schemas residing in an Oracle9i Database .
The schemas contain:
The following prerequisites are necessary for any deployment of Oracle Web Conferencing.
Oracle9i Application Server is an integrated J2EE application server that provides the Oracle HTTP Server, Oracle9iAS Containers for J2EE, and other Oracle Web Conferencing prerequisites.
This includes Oracle Internet Directory and Oracle9iAS Single Sign-On. Among its services, Oracle9iAS Infrastructure provides user provisioning and authentication services.
The Oracle9i Database, release 2, is a prerequisite for Oracle Web Conferencing. The Oracle Real-Time Collaboration Repository for Oracle Web Conferencing resides in this database.
Oracle Web Conferencing management consists of system management, business management, and user management.
Support for management of different topologies--Lets you manage Web Conferencing in a geographically-distributed enterprise and provides support for various deployments, taking into account all enterprise considerations like firewall issues and load balancers (LBR).
High availability--Provides process monitoring and automatic restart of processes when component failure is detected.
Oracle Enterprise Manager integration--Integrated with Oracle Enterprise Manager.
The Oracle Web Conferencing (Oracle Real-Time Collaboration) system is comprised of both Real-Time Collaboration components and other external components on which the system depends.
The following illustrates Real-Time Collaboration system management:
Text description of the illustration sysmgmt.gif
The imtctl utility provides a command-line interface for administering and configuring the Real-Time Collaboration system. The utility supports a variety of commands:
Oracle Enterprise Manager is used to manage the external components on which Oracle Real-Time Collaboration depends, like the Oracle9iAS mid-tier, Oracle9iAS Infrastructure, Oracle9i Database. Real-Time Collaboration interfaces are used for monitoring Web Conferencing and generating alerts.
The Oracle Enterprise Manager standalone console provides basic instance management operations, like starting and shutting down an instance and viewing the state of the instance.
Refer to the Oracle Enterprise Manager Administrator's Guide for more information.
Oracle Real-Time Collaboration publishes interfaces that you can plug into any external management framework. With the interfaces, you can run service availability tests and get real-time monitoring data that can be collected periodically and used for historical analysis to tune the system.
Oracle Real-Time Collaboration business management provides a rich set of features for an administrator to manage non-system-related functionality of the Web Conferencing deployment. It provides functionality that lines of business managers and support staff can use to monitor usage and manage business-related activities.
Conference Monitoring--With this feature, you can monitor conferences that are currently running on the system. This is useful both in support situations and business administration.
Reporting--Oracle Real-Time Collaboration provides comprehensive usage and feedback reports.
Site Management--With this feature, you can customize a single Oracle Web Conferencing deployment in an enterprise for different lines of business or site usage. Each line of business can have its own look-and-feel and customized integration with the Real-Time Collaboration system.
Users with the appropriate Oracle Real-Time Collaboration role can access the administration tabs via the Web-based user interface. Using the tabs, users can access such functionality as monitoring conferences and viewing reports. With the imtctl command-line interface, you can perform various business management tasks. Using the ReportManager infrastructure, you can generate reports that can be automatically e-mailed to recipients.
The Real-Time Collaboration system uses Oracle Internet Directory for user management. The Oracle Internet Directory host used by Real-Time Collaboration is specified at installation. All users of this Oracle Internet Directory are automatically provisioned to use Real-Time Collaboration with the enduser role.
By default, users are managed using the oiddas interface of Oracle Internet Directory. This is typically available at http://<ldaphostname>:7777/oiddas. A user with the Oracle Internet Directory administrator account, typically orcladmin, can create, update, and delete users.
| See Also:
Oracle Collaboration Suite Installation and Configuration Guide for Solaris for more information |
To successfully deploy Oracle Web Conferencing and manage the system, Oracle Corporation recommends following the steps.
Understand the basic concepts of the Oracle Web Conferencing product, including its architecture, components, end-user connections, load balancing, and network and port considerations for deployment.
Follow the sizing guidelines to estimate the hardware requirements for your deployment. Take into account the existing deployment of other Web-based applications, including firewall considerations and load balancers.
Install the Oracle Real-Time Collaboration system and follow the post-installation steps. When you are finished, run the post-installation verification tests. Out of the box, some tests might fail. The most common reason is incomplete configuration. Fix the configuration for each of the failures.
Monitor the health of the Real-Time Collaboration system by running service availability tests periodically. Have the results of the tests tied to an alert management system.
Troubleshoot the system as required to address user complaints and failures detected by diagnostic tests run manually or through alerts.
Tune the Web Conferencing (the Real-Time Collaboration) system, as required. You might need to change the existing configuration or add more machines. Follow the guidelines described in the tuning section of this manual.
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