Raindance Meeting Edition is a full featured web conferencing package, sporting a number of features not found in other products. For example, the product provides a facility that will dial out to your participants at the designated meeting time (after an attendee enters their phone number online at the start of the meeting, Meeting Edition automatically calls them back). What a great convenience for the meeting participants, who no longer need to bother with keeping track of the dial-in number. Meeting Edition also provides the option of connecting your attendees to the audio portion of your meeting via phone, via webcast (through their computer speaker), or you can provide both options and let the attendee choose. There are almost too many features available in Raindance to describe in a short article, but I'll try to cover the big ones for you, and then point you to the full blown product documentation if you need to delve deeper. Meeting Edition does require a software installation on the user's desktop. There are two versions of the install: one for moderators (the full edition) and one for participants (light edition). The light edition doesn't provide all the functionality of the full edition, but it is handy for Mac users, people with limited bandwith, or those who prefer not to install software. The light edition requires a browser upgrade - not a full software install. In addition, companies wishing to can deploy some of the Raindance infrastructure software inside their firewalls (as an option). The collaboration tools provided are full-featured. Raindance lets you share documents, applications, browsers (without requiring participants to surf independently), and also supports a shared whiteboarding facilty. Chatting with participants (one or all) without interrupting the meeting is provided, as well as a polling feature that lets the moderator get instant feedback from attendees. There's a question/answer facility that let's the moderator take questions from the group, flag questions that need additional attention, and report on the interactions after the meeting. Raindance is integrated with Microsoft Outlook, so you can schedule meetings from the Outlook calendar, and users get one-click access. Raindance also supports Powerpoint (and it does preserve slide transitions-unlike some other products on the market that have a problem with that). A meeting "room" is always available - there are no reservations required. The participant management controls provided let the moderator define what each participant can do and these controls include resource locking, muting, and dismissal functions. The moderator can also view who is on the phone, who is on the web, and meetings can be started with an ad-hoc email notice to the attendees, or the moderator can use audio dial-outs to phone numbers stored in his/her Outlook contact list. Raindance provides a recording facility that gives you a fully synchronized meeting playback capability that includes annotations, polls and, of course, the audio and video portions of the meeting. In summary, Raindance Meeting Edition is one of the most complete and flexible packages I've seen so far. Look for an upcoming article reviewing Raindance Seminar Edition. To get more details visit:
http://www.raindance.com |
