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

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

Preliminary test results

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).

The main advantages for WebEx above Zoom are:

no time limit on meetings (can also be a disadvantage...)
more secure by EU servers
integration with outlook calendar: if you plan a meeting with several people this meeting will also be added to all attendees calendars.

WebEx

Get started

A good introduction video is at:

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

To join a meeting you don't need an account. However to plan a meeting you do need an account. The person with an account which plans a meeting is called the 'host' of the meeting.

Thus a host can plan a meeting and invite a lot off people which do not need an account to join in for the meeting. This way not everybody needs an account.

The Ict HelpDesk has licence for 750 'host' accounts for the whole university. So only request an account if you really need to organize meetings.

Easiest way to connect without needing an account:

Joining a meeting without an account

To join a meeting you don't need an account:. To join a meeting do:

open the URL which you got in the meeting invitation. (in browser)
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.
Then you are prompted for some identification information:
- name: supply your fullname
- email: use your ru-email and not your science email. Otherwise the integration with outlook calendar will not work.
then the video meeting would show up and you are joined in the meeting.
Sometimes you are asked to sign up. DO NOT do that, but instead click on the use as "guest" button.

Signing up is only for people with an account.

You can install the desktop application. In that case when you open the meeting invitation URL in the browser, the browser will open the desktop application. Then follow the same steps as for the web application above.

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

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.

Web Meeting

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