8
Oracle Web Conferencing

This chapter provides information about issues associated with Oracle Web Conferencing. It contains the following sections:

• Introduction
• Feature Set
• Components Overview
• User Management
• System Requirements
• Documentation Errata

8.1 Introduction

Oracle Web Conferencing--part of Oracle Real-Time Collaboration--provides a real-time collaboration environment for your conferences. Whether you are hosting an online seminar, providing support to your customers, or brainstorming with your team, Oracle Web Conferencing will bring everyone into one powerful collaborative environment.

Oracle Web Conferencing is designed and developed to meet the demanding requirements of real-time collaboration across the enterprise including the blending of real-time online conference services into enterprise applications, corporate Web sites, portals, and exchanges. These demanding requirements include:

• E-business context: Integration within the context of the content, commerce, and comprehensive business flows of an enterprise
• Support for all types of online conferences: Meet the online collaboration requirements across all lines of business for all conference types. Oracle Web Conferencing supports the following conference types:

  Live Help:

  • Initiated by customer requesting live help on Web store, support or other site.
  • Request can be routed to any expert or interaction center agent based on existing enterprise infrastructure using Oracle Web Conferencing integration services.
  • Agent and customer are able to cobrowse together based on context of customer's Web site session.
  • Highly collaborative with ability to jointly fill out Web forms.
  • No large download or permission alert for customer.

  Interactive:

  • Team, partner, or group conference of any type.
  • Customer presentations and demos.
  • Typically participative through collaboration and shared control.
  • Web Seminars:
  • Online seminars with a small or very large number of attendees.
  • Marketing, education, or other types of online seminars.
  • Large corporate communication or other conferences. Attendees primarily listen only with interaction through polls, text chat, or selective voice questions.

8.2 Feature Set

The following sections provide information on the feature set.

8.2.1 Oracle Web Conferencing Application

The application module for Oracle Web Conferencing allows secure access over the public Internet for guests and registered users. Guest attendees can join public conferences and other conferences that they have been invited to attend, and registered Oracle Web Conferencing users can log in to the application from anywhere on the public Internet or corporate intranet. The application module is built using standard Oracle UIX components.

• Starting or joining conferences: With Oracle Web Conferencing, registered users who are logged in can host an instant conference, or schedule a conference in advance. The first time a user wants to start or join a conference can navigate to the new user flow to test for system compatibility. The test checks the users system for compatibility with Oracle Web Conferencing and downloads the Oracle Web Conferencing Console. This check is also done each time the user starts or joins a conference.
• Scheduling conferences: When scheduling a conference, the user can set the time, date, agenda, dial-in information, and publish pre-conference documents. The user can also invite attendees. If the user opts to do this, an e-mail invitation is sent to all the attendees when the conference is successfully scheduled. The attendees can then click the conference link in the e-mail invitation to enter the conference. To schedule a conference, click on the Schedule tab. You can give the following inputs at the time of conference scheduling:
  • Conference title.
  • Optional password.
  • Time of conference.
  • Duration.
  • Conference type:

    Regular conference: This type of conference is open to anyone who has the conference details. To list the conference on a public Web page, the user selects the check box for that option.

    Restricted conference: This is a secure conference. Access is restricted to registered Oracle Web Conferencing users who are logged in and invited through the Oracle Web Conferencing Application.

  • Invite attendees:

    Registered users: To invite a registered user, the user enters the user ID, or click the search icon next to the User ID field to locate a user.

    Non-registered users: The user can invite non-registered users by entering their names and e-mail addresses. The user can click "Publish list of attendees" so that the invitation list is visible to all attendees.

  • Dial-in and materials: The user can enter dial-in information if the user is using a teleconferencing service. In addition, the user can also provide links to documents that need to be seen by conference attendees before the conference. The conference materials need to be uploaded to the users personal document repository from the Materials tab. These documents are also available to the user during the conference. Any document can be shared pre- and post-conference with conference attendees.
  • Oracle Web Conferencing Console options: The user can customize the Oracle Web Conferencing Console for the scheduled conference. The selections determine the appearance of the Oracle Web Conferencing Console at the beginning of the conference. The user can also modify the Oracle Web Conferencing Console appearance during a conference by clicking the Preferences button in the Oracle Web Conferencing Console.
• Managing materials: Oracle Web Conferencing enhances the efficiency of online conferences by enabling a high-fidelity exchange of visual data. Registered users can upload and manage conference materials such as documents, bookmarks, polls, and predefined chat messages. Documents that can be cobrowsed during a conference are clearly indicated in the uploaded documents table with a green check mark. Registered users also have a personal materials repository on Oracle Web Conferencing where documents, bookmarks, messages, and polls can be stored. The user can access these materials any time once logged in to the Oracle Web Conferencing Application, and can access and present these materials during a conference. Materials are organized into four sections:
  • Documents: The documents repository stores documents that the user can use before, after, or during a conference. When the user uploads the documents to the personal materials repository, the user can make them available to attendees through a link in the conference invitation, present documents during a conference, add and also present documents after a conference has started and make them available to attendees after the conference in the post-conference details page. When a document is uploaded, it is automatically converted to HTML if it is a Microsoft Word, Excel, or PowerPoint document. The HTML conversion gives the user the option of viewing the file in document presentation mode, a collaboration mode optimized for document viewing. In document presentation mode, the user can present documents and images from the personal materials repository, and navigate through PowerPoint documents using the index and thumbnails. The user can also view *.jpg and *.txt files in the document presentation mode.
  • Bookmarks: Bookmarks are Web addresses (URLs) that are saved so that the user can quickly access them during a conference. It saves the user time by not having to type the Web address during a conference.
  • Messages: Messages are canned phrases that the user can access while using the chat feature during a conference. Creating a message in advance saves the user the time of typing it while a conference is in progress. The user can create messages that are used frequently, like "Welcome to this conference. I am glad you could attend," or "Hold on, please. I will answer your question in a moment."
  • Polls: Polls are short questionnaires that the user creates before or during a conference for distribution during a conference. Each poll can have up to six responses. Each poll can either accept single or multiple answers. The question, title of the poll, responses and response type are set by the user. On the fly polls can also be created during the conference.
• Managing and viewing archives: Hosts can publish conference archives for participants to view after the conference. The conference archive can be made available to conference attendees only or can be listed in the public conferences archive. Summary and detail reports are available to conference hosts immediately after a conference. Access to a conference's archive corresponds to access to the conference. Conference hosts can update publishing options of conferences they have hosted. conference hosts can optionally choose to publish any of the above information to attendees through the archive. Access to conference archives is based on the same level of security, including conference ID and password, as the conference itself. As a result, the same level of flexibility in terms of securing conferences is applied to post-conference information published through conference archives. Registered Oracle Web Conferencing users can see a listing of all of the conferences they have hosted and attended through the archives. Users can update and modify publishing options at any time, and can delete an archive of any past conference the user has hosted. Non-registered users can view archives for conferences they have attended through the pre-login Archive tab. These reports are accessible from the archives tab. Reports include information such as:
  • Attendees: When they joined the conference, how long they stayed, and individual responses to conference polls.
  • Conference documents: A comprehensive list of all conference documents, including those made available before the conference, during the conference, and any additional documents published after the conference.
  • Conference URLs: A list of all of the URLs cobrowsed during the conference.
  • Chat transcript: A complete transcript of the chat messages during the conference.
  • Poll results: Summary information on responses to polls with the ability to drill down into individual user responses.
  • Playback: If the host recorded the conference, then a file containing the recorded conference can also be played back.

8.2.2 Oracle Web Conferencing Console

The Oracle Web Conferencing Console is a flexible real-time online conference environment. The control in the console can be shared with any user participating in the conference. However, the conference host always has the ultimate control.

Oracle Web Conferencing provides four different collaboration modes that hosts can use to present conference content.

• Cobrowse mode
  • Synchronous browsing and window scrolling of HTML pages with a small or a large number of users.
  • Users can type in Web addresses (URLs) or select user predefined bookmarks to navigate.
  • Collaborative form filling, including support for real-time individual character display.
• Document presentation mode
  • Select and display documents from Oracle Web Conferencing personal materials repository.
  • Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, HTML, text and image (.gif and .jpg) can all be presented.
  • The user can navigate to the previous or next slides and view the thumbnails or index in PowerPoint documents.
• Whiteboard mode
  • Conference presenters and attendees have access to a rich set of mark up and drawing tools for the visual review and annotation of shared content, or as an aid in making presentations.
  • Drawing tools included are

    Paintbrush with selection of colors and line widths.

    Straight line with selection of colors and line widths.

    Stamps with selection of colors and shapes such as arrows, and circles.

    An eraser for erasing parts of the drawing.

    Erase all that allows you to erase the entire whiteboard at once.

    Undo to undo the users last draw action.

• Desktop Sharing mode
  • Presenters can share anything from their MS-Windows-based computer with other attendees in real-time.
  • Sharing options include:

    Sharing any region or multiple regions.

    Any application.

    The entire desktop.

In addition to the collaboration modes, the Oracle Web Conferencing Console offers the following features in all modes.

• Mediation: The host can let an attendee present material from her desktop to other attendees. In Desktop Sharing mode, a presenter can give shared control of the presenter's desktop to another attendee.
• Polling: Lets the host or attendees with the presenter role send out a poll to conference participants. Hosts and presenters can also:
  • Select and issue a previously created poll from the personal materials repository,
  • Create and issue a new poll during the conference,
  • Have multiple response polls,
  • Allow the sender to vote in the poll,
  • Allow presenters to send polls,
  • View all polls sent,
  • View poll results in a bar chart during polling,
  • View poll results as they are being received,
  • Stop polling so that attendees cannot submit any more answers,
  • Share the poll results with attendees.
• Chat: Lets conference participants converse with each other through the Chat interface. The host of the conference can enable Public, Group and/or Host Chat. The Chat feature allows you to:
  • Create new Group Chats,
  • View all Chat participants' names,
  • View all messages in the Group Chat that you joined,
  • Select text font, style, color, and size; have your messages in bold, italics, or underlined; add emoticons to your messages,
  • Undock the Chat box for each Group Chat,
  • See a visual indicator when a new message is received in any Group Chat that you are not currently viewing.
• Voice streaming: Lets the host do a verbal presentation while attendees listen through their computers. The host can create and save a dial-in, therefore enabling the dial-in to be re-used for future conferences. If voice recording is enabled, voice is synchronized with the on-screen data collaboration for on-demand playback of the conference. Voice recording can be stopped and resumed at any time during the conference.
• Save screen: Lets any conference participant save the screen as a snapshot. The snapshot file can be saved to any chosen location such as the desktop.
• Extended help tip: Lets any conference participant view online help during a conference. Clicking on the help icon reveals the extended tip text.

8.3 Components Overview

The following sections provide an overview of the components.

8.3.1 Oracle Real-Time Collaboration Core Components

The Oracle Real-Time Collaboration Core Components are the end-user facing components that provides conference service to users. It contains the Oracle9i Application Server mid-tier, which is an Oracle Real-Time Collaboration prerequisite, the Oracle Web Conferencing Server, and other components. Installation of the core components requires the following pre-requisites.

• Oracle9i Application Server Infrastructure: This includes Oracle Internet Directory and Oracle9iAS Single Sign-On. Oracle9i Application Server Infrastructure provides user provisioning and authentication services.
• Oracle9i Database: The latest Oracle9i Database, release 2, is a prerequisite for Oracle Web Conferencing.
• Oracle9i Application Server: Oracle9i Application Server is an integrated J2EE application server. It is a prerequisite for Oracle Real-Time Collaboration. When installed, the Oracle Real-Time Collaboration Core Components is positioned over the Oracle9i Application Server mid-tier.

8.3.2 Document Conversion Server

The Document Conversion Server is a grouping of Oracle Web Conferencing components that converts MS Office documents into HTML for viewing in Document Presentation mode. It must be installed on a computer with Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office.

8.3.3 Voice Conversion Server

A grouping of Oracle Web Conferencing components that dials into a voice conferencing system, converts the analog voice to digital format, and streams it. It must be installed on a computer with Microsoft Windows and requires specialized telephony hardware and software.

8.4 User Management

Oracle Real-Time Collaboration uses Oracle Internet Directory for user management. The Oracle Internet Directory host used by Oracle Real-Time Collaboration is specified at installation. All users of this Oracle Internet Directory are automatically provisioned to use Oracle Web Conferencing with the end user 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.

8.5 System Requirements

Oracle Web Conferencing has the following pre-requisites:

• Platform: Windows 98, Windows Me, Windows NT 4.0 Service Pack 4 or higher, Windows 2000, Windows XP
• Browser: Internet Explorer 5.5 or higher
• Java: Enabled
• Resolution: 1024 x 768 pixels

8.6 Documentation Errata

The following errors were found in the Web Conferencing Sizing Guide, Section 6.1 "Determining Your CPU Requirements"

Current text: "1. Select a table from Section 4, "Oracle Web Conferencing Usage Statistics" that represents your deployment platform:"

Error: This document contains information for Solaris only. Information for other platforms is not contained in this document.

Current text: "2. From the questionnaire in Section 3, "Estimating Your Oracle Web Conferencing Usage", divide #10 by 20 and round up. Multiply the result by the CPU row in the table you selected in #1 of this section. ___"

Clarification: The second sentence should say "Multiply the result by the "Hardware Usage for 20 Clients" column of the CPU row."

Current text: "3. Multiply #10 by the CPU row in the table you selected in #1 of this section. _____"

Error: This should say: "Multiply #11 by the "Hardware Usage for One Conference" column in the "CPU Usage" row.

Current text: "4. Add the results from #2 and #3 of this section and divide by 100%."

Error: This should say: "Add the results from #2 and #3 of this section and divide by 100."