Web Meeting

Web Meeting Software

The ICT Helpdesk offers support with

• 'Surfvideo calling' : pilot, meetings with max 6 persons.
• 'WebEx' : meetings with max 250 persons with current license.

For non-sensitive topics you can use

• Skype : Suitable for up to 5 people. Advantage over alternatives: you can dial somebody directly.
• Zoom : Suitable for up to 99 people. With the free version, a session with 3 or more participants can last up to 40 minutes.

Both are not supported by the ICT Helpdesk.

The ICT Helpdesk advices to use WebEx for sensitive topics because their servers are located in the EU and can be password protected. The servers of skype and zoom are probably not in the EU.

Look here for more info from the ICT Helpdesk about online meetings

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We did some preliminary tests. Our findings are:

• 'Surfvideo calling' : not so enthousiastic about it. Big delay between audio and video, and no drawing board.
• 'WebEx' : Fine.
• 'Zoom' : Fine. Drawing board is nicer than the one of WebEx.

For all three we found out that Video/audio quality will sometimes be problematic if you have bad internet connection (vdsl with only 2,5 Mbs upload). It can help to disable video and use only audio. (only for attendees with bad internet).

Below I will discuss how to use WebEx because that is the advices web meeting software by the ICT Helpdesk.

WebEx

Get started

Since thursday 19 march 2020 the university has a licence for the WebEx Online meeting software.

A good introduction video is at:

 https://ebooks.cisco.com/story/webexessentials/page/2/1

joining a meeting

To join a meeting you don't need an account. You just have to click the url which you got in the meeting invitation. Webex will then be opened in your browser.

When you open webex for the first time in the web browser you are prompted to install the "webex desktop application". You can skip that and click "Join from browser", then you can join the meeting from within your webbrowser without to need to install anything.

However the "webex desktop application" application may be easier to use if you have regular meetings.

If you are prompted for an email use your ru-email and not your science email. Otherwise the integration with outlook calendar will not work. It will then next ask for a password. Carefully read what characters are allowed in the password. Characters like '@' seem not to be allowed in the password.

Note: when I supplied my ru-email the first time something went wrong, and I had to press "reset password" to set my password for the first time.

planning a meeting

Anyway planning meetings works great online within the webbrowser. There you also have more options then in the desktop application.

If you plan a meeting then there are 3 types, shown at

   Standard Scheduled Meeting: to schedule a meeting where you can invite people with their email address (meeting will also put in outlook calendar!)
   Personal Room Meeting :  each person has its personal url  where to meet. See it has your personal office where everybody can walk in and out, but then virtual!  Offcourse iff somebody is not in his personal office you can enter but you are alone. See can make appointments to meet at the office.
   Example: mine personal office online is:  https://ru.webex.com/meet/harco.kuppens
   Personal Conference Meeting  => not recommended, and audio only!

Normally you would only use option 1. for planned virtual meetings.

More details see: https://help.webex.com/en-us/k3jv9i/Compare-Cisco-Webex-Meeting-Types

use ru-email addresses for inviting people

When you invite people for a meeting then use their ru-email address such that it will automatically be added to their outlook calendar.

Unfortunately completion of email adresses does not work in webex. So you have to figure the email adresses out yourself. On the radboudnet webpage you find people's email address however this is not always a ru-email address. For most people of iCIS their cs/science email address is listed there. To help people to find a ru-email address for a person I added this info to our intra wiki today.

See: https://wiki.icis-intra.cs.ru.nl/People_RU#Search_for_the_ru-email_address_off_a_colleague

Unfortunately inviting people using the outlook groups we created does not work. I can ask the ICT-helpdesk if they maybe can fix this?

So for that we still have to use our own group mailing lists like the learningandtesting@cs.ru.nl mailgroup. Because they all contain cs/science email addresses these meetings are not automatically added to our outlook calendar. However when we accept/"tentative accept" the invite it will be.

Bugs

Planning with desktop application on macos doesn't work

I installed the Desktop application on my macbook, and planning meetings with it was terrible. People got invited without any information about the meeting. Maybe on windows it works better... So I would use only use the Desktop application to join meetings, but do the planning in the online version. However for the test I would not yet install the Desktop application and just use the browser.