Instant Collaboration

InstaColl enables team members collaborate with others over the Web using their Word, Excel andPowerPoint documents easily and quickly. Users can also share their desktops with each other for doing interactive demos. It also has a built-in chat module to chat simultaneously. It keeps user-wise track of changes while collaborating in Excel and uses color codes to mark changes in Word. In PowerPoint, however, it doesn't allow editing of slides. Also, its performance and session creation depends upon your Internet speed and connectivity with the InstaColl server. 

We've given a trial version of InstaColl on this month's PCQEssential CD, which allows document sharing between two users only. Installing the same is pretty easy and only takes a minute. It needs Win 2000 and Office 2000 or above with IE 5.0. Let's see how to use it.

Click on 'Get an InstaColl ID' and a website opens, which will create your username and password in two steps Click on Yes when security warning appears to open this window. Click on 'InstaColl Now' to create the session Enter the session details and the agenda. Passkey generates a four digit number identification for the session and is optional. Click on Invite to start the session E-mail client will open and you have to send the e-mail to the person to collaborate with. The e-mail has a passkey and a link for him to join the session On the InstaColl interface, left pane shows the session details and right pane lists the moderator, users and a chat window To upload photos, click on Tools>Upload My Photo. Click on Tools>Options>Administrator. Select the user and give the rights. Select the application from the tabs on top  A word document shared. Click on Publish to render the document to the user. The user now needs control User clicks on Request Control button on the top to get control. Click on Yes to give control to the user The user can now change the document (as seen in green) and publish it for the other person to see Click on Screen Sharing tab to share your desktop. To record this as avi, select InstaColl>Start Screen Sharing

Sushil Oswal