Using the Meet Now Function
Users sometimes think they need to schedule a
conference or reserve resources because of how they interacted with a
legacy system. The Lync client can dynamically generate a conference if
the user clicks the drop-down arrow next to the Options icon and
selects Meet Now. This is equivalent to dragging participants into an
existing conversation, but it creates an empty conference that the
organizer can then set up before inviting participants.
Hover over the participants icon at the
bottom of the window and select Invite More People to see the contact
list and add participants. The organizer can also just drag and drop
contacts from the main Lync contact list window into the meeting window
to add participants.
When contacts are being invited by
name or phone number, Lync displays the existing contacts to simplify
adding an attendee who is already known to the meeting organizer.
Highlighting the contact and clicking OK sends an invite to the
contact. The person is notified by a pop-up box and can opt to either
join the conference or ignore the invitation.
Controlling a Meeting
Presenter can sometimes find it useful to
have a bit more control over the meeting experience. Lync 2013 offers
meeting organizers some excellent tools for managing a meeting. For
example, right-click on attendees to mute their audio, remove them from
the conference, or modify their meeting privileges as presenter or
attendee. The mute tool is especially useful when a participant is
making a lot of background noise that is impacting the meeting
experience.
Hovering over the participants icon while in a conference reveals a number of additional controls:
• Mute Audience—Mutes the entire audience, which can be useful in presentation mode.
• No Attendee Video—Prevents
attendees from sending any video to the meeting. Again, this is useful
in a presentation or broadcast mode in which only presenter video
should be shown.
• Hide Names—Hides names of participants on their photos or video stream.
• Everyone an Attendee—Forces
all meeting participants to be an attendee. This helps ensure that only
specified presenters can share content or control the meeting.
• Invite by Email—Generates an email invitation with the meeting information. This can be sent to participants who should join the conference.
Managing Meeting Content
With the web conference up and running,
participants who were allowed to become presenters based on the meeting
options can use the Share tab in the Lync client to add resources to the conference.
Sharing a whiteboard reveals several tools on
the far-right side so users can collaborate easily. There are pointers,
text, shapes, pens, highlighters, erasers, stamps, line art, and a tool
for inserting an existing image. The three-horizontal-dots icon reveals
a few additional options, including the capability to save to OneNote
or an image file.
PowerPoint decks can also be uploaded and
shared out, and optionally made available for download. After the deck
is uploaded, presenters can click on Thumbnails or Notes to view the
slide previews and any presenter notes. These features are not
available to meeting attendees. The upper-right corner displays a pen
icon that offers the use of the same whiteboard markup tools.
Tip
Always use the PowerPoint feature instead of
doing a desktop or application share. This ensures that the slides are
scaled and formatted to fit the various-size screens that might be
viewing the presentation.
After a poll is created, the presenters can
choose to show the results to attendees or hide them from attendees,
open or close the polls, clear the votes, or save the poll for
reference later.
After content has been shared, it
stays available within the meeting for reuse or distribution. Hovering
over the content icon and selecting Manage Presentable Content displays
all the shared content. Presenters can switch between different pieces
of content, assign permissions to each piece so that attendees can
download it, or remove a component from the meeting.
