ITS News

Vanderbilt Information Technology Services (ITS) is partnering with AT&T to offer Web Meeting to the Vanderbilt community at a reduced price.

Web Meeting, powered by WebEx, is an interactive presentation and collaboration tool. It features audio conferencing and browser-based data sharing. The audio and visual aspects of Web Meeting can be used separately or combined as a powerful meeting/conference tool.

“Web Meeting offers so many tools to enhance collaboration, yet only requires a web browser,” said Mary Marler, Vanderbilt ITS Product Manager, Collaboration. “While one participant is taking notes of the discussion, another can be typing comments on a Powerpoint presentation, while yet another is editing an Excel spreadsheet. But none of the participants need to have the corresponding software.”

Using Web Meeting, the host can invite participants to view, access, and edit data from applications on the host’s computer system, even if participants do not have those applications on their systems. The host can even permit another participant to remotely access and control their computer.

Anyone in the Vanderbilt community with a V-net code can obtain a web meeting host account. Charges are billed to the host’s V-net account. Participants from multiple locations can “attend” the meeting remotely. Web Meeting runs on Windows, Macintosh and UNIX (Java client) systems. It requires an internet browser—either Netscape, Internet Explorer, Firefox, or Mozilla—and a free plug-in hosts and participants must download from an AT&T website.

You can get started by contacting AT&T at 1-800-526-2655  to set up a host account. You only have to do this once. Then you can take advantage of AT&T’s free online training and extensive online help to become familiar with Web Meeting. A two-hour web class for prospective hosts may be particularly helpful. When you’re ready, you can schedule meetings at any time without going through Vanderbilt University operators. No reservation is necessary.

Vanderbilt offers the audio (telephone) and browser-based combination at 20 cents per minute per participant, a savings of nearly 40% off the 33 cents typically charged. Separately, the audio portion is available at 7 cents per minute for each participant and the browser-based web conferencing portion for 13 cents per minute per participant.

Web Meeting provides an elegant, cost-effective solution for the Vanderbilt community. There are no upfront costs, no servers to maintain, and support is provided by AT&T.

Web Meeting can be used in a variety of ways, including for project team meetings, presentations, and remote employee training. You can invite multiple remote sites to join a prescheduled video conference.

Web Meeting provides tremendous flexibility during conferences by offering features such as a whiteboard with drawing tools, chat, polling, file transfer, and recording and playback.

Secure transmission is also provided. All data going to and from AT&T’s servers is Secure Socket Layers (SSL) encrypted.

For additional information, see http://its.vanderbilt.edu/services/webmeeting/ or contact the web conferencing support team at web-conferencing@vanderbilt.edu.