Joining a Conference

Most invitations to a web conference arrive through e-mail. This is to say that in most corporate environments, invites to web conferences are part of an Exchange meeting invite. It appears as a web link inside the meeting invite, as shown in Figure 22.7.

Figure 22.7 Viewing a Meeting URL

Clicking the web link results in the default web browser launching. If pop-up blockers are turned on, the Lync Server warns the user. He can opt to either disable the pop-up blocker for this site and refresh or he can click a link to “Join with pop-up blocker turned on” although that might interfere with screen sharing. It is recommended to disable the pop-up blocker and refresh the connection.

With the pop-up blocker disabled, the main web page notifies the user that the meeting has started in a separate browser window and that the main window can be closed. Meanwhile, a second window pops up and is identified as the Lync Web App, as shown in Figure 22.8.

Figure 22.8 Launching the Web App

The Lync Web App window offers the user two options:

• Join as a guest

• Join using your corporate credentials

When a meeting is organized, the organizer can choose which participants can join automatically and which participants can request to share information or request to control a session. Typically these rights are not given out to guest users. Similarly, guest users are typically placed into a lobby before they are added to the meeting by the organizer.

The Lync Web App window enables you to choose the preferred language in the Language drop-down. Similarly, you can click the gear in the upper-right corner to access the following two options:

• Forget me on this computer

• Enable logging

Checking the box to Forget me on this computer ensures that all personal information entered from the current session is cleared when the user signs out. Enabling logging enables you to choose a location for saving support logs that can be used by Lync support to help troubleshoot any issues that might arise during the conference.

Choosing Join as a guest prompts the user to pick a display name. This name can be anything and shouldn’t be considered a valid form of identification for a guest user. This is to say that a guest user isn’t prevented from using names that might be valid within the organization, so always keep that in mind when allowing guests to join a meeting. Users are offered an option to Remember me on this computer, which results in the display name being persistent should they join future meetings as a guest. Clicking the Join Meeting button connects to the meeting. Users receive a notification that they have successfully joined the meeting.

In the meeting, the user has the ability to share a whiteboard and can show the Stage. The stage is the area that shows shared items. If the organizer of the meeting shares a whiteboard, the state automatically appears on the Silverlight client for the Macintosh user who connected to the meeting. Alternatively, the Macintosh Silverlight client user can share a whiteboard, if allowed by meeting options, and it appears for other users. Unfortunately the Macintosh Silverlight client cannot view a shared application, only a shared whiteboard. This is a different behavior than the Windows-based Silverlight client because the additional plug-in for application sharing doesn’t yet exist for the Macintosh.

Should one choose to Join using your corporate credentials, the client prompts for the domainuser name for logon as well as the password. Entering these and clicking Join Meeting connects the user to the meeting as an authenticated user. This means that the identity can be trusted and that the user will be considered “People from the organizer’s company” when applying Meeting Access rights or Presenter rights.