| Oracle® Collaboration Suite Concepts Guide 10g Release 1 (10.1.1) Part Number B14478-01 |
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View PDF |
| Oracle® Collaboration Suite Concepts Guide 10g Release 1 (10.1.1) Part Number B14478-01 |
|
|
View PDF |
Oracle Collaboration Suite 10g Real-Time Collaboration is a secure, presence-aware, integrated platform designed to meet all the real-time collaboration needs of an enterprise. With its Web Conferencing, Instant Messaging, Chat Conferencing, and Voice over IP features, Oracle Real-Time Collaboration lets individuals and groups meet, communicate, and collaborate in a seamless and unified manner.
Oracle Real-Time Collaboration features can be enabled throughout Oracle Collaboration Suite. For example, Oracle Calendar meetings can be specified as Web conferences, automatically scheduling the Web conference in the Oracle Real-Time Collaboration Web client. Users can enter the conference directly through the Oracle Calendar invitation. Oracle Mail can display a contact's current availability (presence) as set by that contact in Oracle Messenger. Users of Oracle Mail can start instant messaging sessions with available contacts directly from Oracle Mail.
This chapter provides an overview of the Oracle Real-Time Collaboration product and features and contains the following sections.
Oracle Real-Time Collaboration consists of client and server applications that let you identify a user's availability for any Oracle Collaboration Suite task, create and participate in online conferences, and participate in chat sessions with one or more users. Any users in your company's Oracle Internet Directory or other LDAP system can use Oracle Real-Time Collaboration features.
You can set your current availability or presence through Oracle Messenger, showing whether you are available, away, or should not be disturbed. That availability is visible to other users either through their Oracle Messenger window or, if enabled, through their Oracle Mail contacts list.
Oracle Messenger lets you hold real-time instant messaging or "chat" sessions with individual users or groups. In addition, two Oracle Messenger users can hold a full-duplex voice chat. You can also use integration services to enable users outside your company security system (firewall) to send chat messages to specific individuals in your company, for example, to let end-users chat with support engineers.
You can hold Web conferences with others both within and outside the company's firewall. You can schedule Web conferences either through Oracle Real-Time Collaboration Web client, or through Oracle Calendar. You can also invite others to a Web conference from an Oracle Messenger chat session. Attendees can enter a conference directly from an e-mailed invitation sent by either of the scheduling applications, or directly from a Oracle Real-Time Collaboration chat session.
Oracle Real-Time Collaboration provides audio services that let you:
Broadcast a Web conference host's voice from a telephone that is connected to an external phone conference service, to Oracle Web Conferencing attendees.
Broadcast a Web conference host's voice (using Voice over IP) from a PC microphone to listen-only Oracle Web Conferencing attendees.
Start a full-duplex voice chat between two Oracle Web Conferencing attendees using PC speakers and microphones when there are only two attendees present.
Play back a Web conference recording that includes the conference audio.
Start a full-duplex voice chat between two Oracle Messenger users, within a company intranet.
From a user's perspective, there are four main interfaces to the Oracle Real-Time Collaboration system, described in the following sections.
The Oracle Real-Time Collaboration Web client is a series of pages displayed in a Web browser that lets users download the Oracle Real-Time Collaboration clients for conferencing or instant messaging, schedule or join conferences, view archived files of past conferences or instant messages, and identify materials to be shared during conferences.
Note:
If you enable Web conferencing from Oracle Calendar, users can use Oracle Calendar as an alternative method for scheduling Web conferences.System administrators can also use the Oracle Real-Time Collaboration Web client pages to monitor the status of the system and review statistics about conferences and chat sessions.
Figure 9-1 Real-Time Collaboration Web Client: System Administrator's View
The Web Conferencing console is a Windows client that lets users hold Web conferences. The console automatically downloads when a user starts or joins a Web conference.
The console lets users share their desktops and applications with others and use a virtual whiteboard with software drawing tools. During a conference, users can stream voice data from any telephone or teleconference system, or through each attendee's PC speakers. A conference host can send attendees polls and display poll results in real-time, and hold live chat sessions with all or selected attendees. A host can also authorize presenting privileges for other users, let users interact with the host's desktop, or designate another person as host. All conferences can be recorded, including synchronizing any streaming voice data with onscreen data collaboration.
The Oracle Messenger console is a Windows client that users download from the Oracle Real-Time Collaboration Web client pages described previously. Users can set a message showing their own availability, and view the availability of any contacts they have chosen from the list of users you authorized through your company's Oracle Internet Directory or other LDAP directory.
Users can start a chat session from the Oracle Messenger console or from the Oracle Mail contact list (if enabled). They can also hold voice chat sessions with a single individual. Users can invite other users to participate in a group chat session, or escalate that chat session to a Web conference directly from the chat window. They can also broadcast chat messages to multiple users.
Users can send and receive files during chat sessions with others within the company intranet (for security reasons, this feature is not available outside the company firewall). All chat sessions are automatically recorded and users and administrators can view the chat archive files from the Oracle Messenger console or the Oracle Real-Time Collaboration Web client.
The Oracle Real-Time Collaboration Add-in for Microsoft Office is a toolbar that users download and install from the Real-Time Collaboration New User page. Installing the add-in adds the RTC toolbar to the top of any Microsoft Office document.
The RTC Add-in toolbar lets users schedule Web conferences, start instant conferences, and join conferences directly from Microsoft Office applications. The RTC toolbar also lets users see their Oracle Messenger online contacts and start a chat session from a Microsoft Office application. Users must be signed in to Oracle Messenger in order to start a chat session from Microsoft Office.
Figure 9-4 Oracle Real-Time Collaboration Add-in for Microsoft Office
Oracle Real-Time Collaboration lets users create individual sites for different lines of business (for example, sales and support) and customize system, application, and conference properties for those sites. Many of the features previously described for Web conferencing or messaging can be customized for these sites. Users can also be assigned specific administrative or end-user privileges for a particular site.
