Office
Communications Server 2007 R2 can replace expensive hosted offerings
such as Microsoft Live Meeting. This on-premise conferencing solution
can be extended to include external and anonymous guests through the OCS
edge server as well. The web conferencing component of OCS utilizes the
same Live Meeting client on the desktop for connectivity.
Installing the Live Meeting 2007 Client
OCS web conferencing
sessions can be attended with the Live Meeting Client. The client
installation is straightforward and does not require any immediate
configuration. Meeting information is included in the invitation so that
no additional client reconfiguration is required to utilize OCS web
conferencing or migrate from off-premise Live Meeting.
Working with Live Meeting
A web conferencing session, shown in Figure 1,
allows for a presenter to share applications with end users, chat with
them over text or audio, share video with the users, and interact with
them in a question-and-answer format.
Invitations to the
web conference can be easily sent via email through an Outlook add-in,
and attendees need only click on the link in the email to join. Users
who have attended Microsoft Webcasts in the past might recognize many of
the features, as similar technology has been used for this purpose. OCS
web conferencing enables organizations to quickly and easily hold
online web conferences on the fly.
