Collaborating Up There, in the Cloud

In April 09, IBM launched LotusLive Engage. Popularly known by the code name

Blue House, it is a cloud-based web meeting and online collaboration services

suite. Being a cloud-based solution, users can conduct/attend web meetings from

anywhere in the world. Under the Web Meeting option, it allows sharing of

applications as well as the desktop of presenter and participants. Web Meeting

also supports instant messaging, real time creation of polls as well as surveys.

For collaboration, LotusLive Engage has a feature called Activities, where you

can plan your projects, store and share files, presentations, code, etc. Here

you can also determine your To do tasks, assign tasks to a particular member,

set priorities, etc. LotusLive also allows users to share files amongst them.

You can upload images, presentations or audio files. All the shared files, IM

messages and shared content have end-to-end encryption.

Getting started



You require IE 7 or Firefox 3 and above, JVM and Adobe Flash player. Once

inside Lotus Live, the first thing you need to do is create an Activity. To do

this, click on 'Start an Activity.' A floating window will appear. Here give a

name to this activity and define a goal for it. To share this activity with

other members, choose contacts from member options. An email with a link to this

activity will be sent to all members. Finally, click on Save to start the

activity. You can add new entries, to do items, files, etc and share them with

other members.

Web meetings



Hosting a meeting is simple. Just click on 'host a meeting' option in the

main dashboard. This would launch LotusLive meetings in a new window.

From here you can invite new participants through emails. To start sharing an

application or the entire desktop itself,click on Share, present at the top of

the menu bar.

In LotusLive Web Meeting, you can share applications as well as desktops of both the presenter as well as participants.

The software would ask you to choose applications you want to share; you can

even share your entire desktop. You can also share more than one application at

the same time. Similarly, you can also create and conduct surveys as well as

polls during a meeting.