The vision for Microsoft Exchange 2000 Conferencing Server is to make meetings without walls possible, and provide a platform that supports scalable and reliable data, video, and audio conferencing. NetMeeting users who are connected to Exchange 2000 Conferencing Server will experience single-click access to conferences and full integration of real-time meetings with their Microsoft Outlook calendars. At the same time, administrators will experience the powerful management features of Conferencing Server, which enable protection of bandwidth, load balancing, and failover.Multipoint data conferencing allows two or more people to communicate and collaborate as a group over the Internet or corporate intranet in real time. Exchange 2000 Conferencing Server provides a scalable and reliable platform for supporting the four key segments of data conferencing: application sharing, text discussion (chat), whiteboard capabilities, and file transfer.
Users can share any application that runs on one computer with other participants in a conference. Participants can review the same data or information and see actions as the person who is sharing the application works on a document (for example, editing content or scrolling through information). The person who is sharing a document can choose to collaborate with other conference participants and even let others take turns editing a document. Only the person who is sharing the program in which the edits are taking place needs to have the shared application installed on his or her computer.
A user also can type text messages to share common ideas or topics with other conference participants, or record meeting notes and action items as part of the collaborative process. In addition, participants in a conference can use text-based discussions to communicate privately with a subset of other participants, without interrupting the audio communication between the larger groups of participants.
The whiteboard is a multipage, multiuser drawing application that allows users to sketch diagrams or organization charts, or display other graphical information with participants in a conference. For example, one user could import a digital photo to the whiteboard, and could use the whiteboard as a focus for discussing the photo, annotating it with questions and comments. In addition, a remote pointer or highlighting tool can be used to point out specific content or sections of shared pages.
Using the file-transfer capability, a conference participant can send a file to one or all of the other participants. The file transfer occurs in the background, as everyone continues to share an application, use the whiteboard, or have a text-based discussion.
Exchange 2000 Conferencing Server offers complete multiparty audio and video conferencing, using technology that is suited ideally to enterprise usage. Exchange 2000 Conferencing Server uses Telephony API (TAPI) 3.0 to access the unique collaboration features of Windows 2000, such as quality of service and IP-based multicast technology, to provide audio and video teleconferencing services. IP-based multicast technology particularly is well suited to enterprise conferencing, because it allows significantly more simultaneous users to participate in videoconferences than today's multiparty video solutions. For clients that do not have Windows 2000 on the desktop, Exchange 2000 Conferencing Server bridges clients (like NetMeeting), with the industry standard H.323, into multicast conferences with Windows 2000-based clients.
At the center of Exchange 2000 Conferencing Server is the Conference Management Service. This component provides for the overall coordination of different conferencing technologies, as well as the administration of limited corporate conferencing resources. Conference Management Service keeps track of scheduled conferences and provides administrators with control of attendee access to conferences. It is also fully extensible as a platform for development of complementary conferencing technologies by independent software vendors.
For end users, the benefits of Conference Management Service are single-click access to conferences and full integration into their calendars. Scheduling takes place either from Outlook or from a browser that views Outlook Web Access on the Exchange server. Schedule requests also can be sent to Conference Management Service from other calendaring clients, such as Outlook 97, Outlook 98, Lotus Notes, and Microsoft Schedule+.
A final benefit to users and administrators is the ability to combine any number of conferencing types and make them all available to conference participants when they join the conference. For example, participants could join a conference that had been enabled to share a desktop application, communicate by telephone, and include others in a videoconference. This multiconferencing capability is not available in any other solution that is on the market today.
