Managing Access and Entry to Your Connect Pro Room

Getting Started

In this tutorial, we'll look at how to quickly get participants in and out of your Connect Pro room. All of the options to manage access are under your 'Meeting' menu. Choose the submenu 'Manage Access & Entry'.

Inviting Participants

Acrobat Connect Pro offers the option to use custom URL's which are typically easy to remember. However, it may often be the case that you didn't choose to enter a custom URL or you want to quickly copy the meeting room URL to your clipboard to invite other participants via eMail or Instant Messenger.

The fastest and easiest way to find the meeting URL is to select 'Invite Participants' from the submenu. This will launch a dialog box that contains the URL to your meeting. The dialog also has the option to launch your default mail client so that you can quickly invite other partipants via email.

Why not just use the the URL in the browser? That is an option, and it will certainly work. However, the URL in the browser has extra information about the specific server you are using. To take advantage of the load balancing features, it's more effecient to use the URL in the invite users dialog. It's also probably easier to remember.

Blocking Incoming Attendees

The second option in the 'Managing Access & Entry' dialog allows the host to shut the virtual door to the meeting room so that anyone joining the meeting late will not be able to gain entry.

The purpose of this function is not to simply punish latecomers to your meeting (though it can certainly be used for that). Connect Pro meeting rooms are persistent; you can use the same room over and over again without having to schedule it. This means that you may have the same Connect Pro room booked for back to back meetings and you may not want a participant from your 3pm meeting intruding on your 2pm meeting which hasn't yet wrapped up.

It's important to note that when you turn this option on in the middle of a meeting, any attendees already in the Connect Pro room will stay in the room. This will only block access to attendees who haven't already access the room yet. If you'd like to remove all participants from the meeting, see the 'Placing Participants On Hold' section below.

The host has the option to allow any waiting particpants to request entry as well as the ability to customize the message that is shown to any one who tries to acces the blocked meeting room. You can click the 'Save Message' button to save your custom message as the new default message for your room. When you room is blocking attendees, you'll see an icon with a lock in the top right hand corner of your screen. You can use this icon (or the standard menu) to stop blocking incoming attendees. A second icon - this one animated - will appear if someone requests access to your room.

Blocking Guest Access

Connect Pro 7 has a new option when creating a meeting room. You can now choose 'Only registered users may enter the room (guest access is blocked)' in addition to the other two access options 'Only registered users and accepted guests...' and 'Anyone who has the URL for the meeting...". Connect Pro rooms are persistent though, and there may often be a case where you decided to set the room up allowing anyone access but want to hold a meeting where you can restrict access to registered users.

You can accomplish this by turning on the 'Block Guest Access' option under the 'Manage Access & Entry' menu. Turning this option on will require anyone wishing to enter the Connect Pro room to type in valid credentials into the log in page.

You can disable this block at any time by deselecting it from the menu.

Placing Participants on Hold

Connect Pro rooms have a 'Preparing Mode' that a host can use to add or change layouts behind the scenes during a meeting. Before a meeting starts though, hosts and presenters often want to spend some time collaborating and getting the layouts, pods and wallpaper ready to go for the meeting. The option to 'Place participants on hold...' is perfect for these situations.

Unlike the 'Block Incoming Attendees' option, placing particpants on hold will temporarily boot all participants out of the room to a lobby area. Any attendees trying to join the meeting will be taken to the same place. Again, it's possible to customize and save the message that participants see when they are placed on hold. When you take the meeting off of hold, everyone in the waiting area will automatically be brought into the Connect room. There is no action needed on the part of the participants.