#1 2008-08-04 16:22:51

**_dyun_**

How can WE help YOU?

Hi everyone,

I wanted to take a moment to introduce myself.  My name is David Yun and I am new to the Acrobat Connect Pro team.  I have been brought on as Community Manager, specifically to interface with you all to help you and your organizations maximize your potential with Acrobat Connect Pro and Adobe Presenter.

Some of you may remember me from before as I had been on the Acrobat Connect Pro (well, Breeze) product team from 2004-2006.  I worked extensively on the Breeze 5 release and it's great to see the product continuing to develop and grow.  I'm really excited to be back on board!

It's going to take me a bit to get ramped up on the big new world of Acrobat Connect Pro, but while I'm in these beginning stages, I'd like to get feedback from you all about the types of information/tutorials/tools, etc. that you are looking for from us.

So let me know, how can WE help YOU?  Respond to this post and let's start the discussion.

Best,
David Yun

**_robert.l.mann_**

Re: How can WE help YOU?

Adobe Presenter 7 is useless until the Edit Audio/Sync issue is fixed.
This will help many of us.

**_NewzGuy_**

Re: How can WE help YOU?

I've waited a long time for this product so I could work with performers online!
As a "newbie", I need to find out how to make repetitive info available easily.
In fact, I'd appreciate a place to ask "newbie" questions...
Hey! How about a live meeting every so often? Let's use this technology!

I'm betting the farm that online training and Connect Pro are the bedrock of my business-future. Give us free/low-cost ways to quickly grab info!

Tnx

Last edited by **_NewzGuy_** (2008-08-06 09:15:48)

**_Jeff_at_RealEyes_**

Re: How can WE help YOU?

I've waited a long time for this product so I could work with performers online!
As a "newbie", I need to find out how to make repetitive info available easily.
In fact, I'd appreciate a place to ask "newbie" questions...
Hey! How about a live meeting every so often? Let's use this technology!

I'm betting the farm that online training and Connect Pro are the bedrock of my business-future. Give us free/low-cost ways to quickly grab info!

Tnx

dyun, I'll take this one. ;)

NewzGuy-
You should try ConnectNow:
http://www.adobe.com/acom/connectnow/
It's a great, free alternative for quick collaborations and online meetings, powered by Adobe. It'll also give you a good feel for the Connect platform itself, and from there you can gauge if it'll be worth an investment in your "business-future".
-Jeff

**_jcooper9099_**

Re: How can WE help YOU?

I would like to see some more functionality from the XML api. like a way to set a user's manager and create events.

**_mark2741_**

Re: How can WE help YOU?

I'd like to see a working example of 3rd-party AICC content being tracked successfully in Connect Training. I'm amazed others aren't asking for this functionality, since developing training in powerpoint is so limiting. We need a simple API to set scores for students.

Adobe's documentation/Salesforce says AICC content is supported but it is not.

**_sgentzen_**

Re: How can WE help YOU?

Hi everyone,
It's going to take me a bit to get ramped up on the big new world of Acrobat Connect Pro, but while I'm in these beginning stages, I'd like to get feedback from you all about the types of information/tutorials/tools, etc. that you are looking for from us.

So let me know, how can WE help YOU?  Respond to this post and let's start the discussion.

I'd like to see more Best-Practices kind of content coming from Adobe on Connect.

I don't know how different the Hosted version is to what we get as licensed users, but I bet there's some things that the people that run Hosted have learned would be of interest of those of us that have our own instances to run.  From the perspective of the infrastructure that supports it, to capacity planning, monitoring, and management from inside the application interface.  I'd especially be interested to hear about tools and tricks that are being used that aren't in the application itself.  (is the reporting interface in Connect really acceptable to Adobe for reporting on the Hosted system?)

Also from the user perspective, I'd like to see a more central way to learn better/interesting ways to lay pods out for certain types of meetings.  Also, for those of us that don't have a lot of dev resources it would be nice to have a more centralized way to find and try/buy third-party developed pods.

Since this thread's also turned into a feature request thread, I'll add there.  I think I already have this in the feature request database over there, but....

Is there any plans for Adobe to decouple Connect from Microsoft technologies?  Dependence on MS SQL server means that shops that don't already have it (and they do exist), have to shell out for a dedicated SQL server for their AC instances that's going to be terribly underutilized.  It would be nice to be able to plug it into existing infrastructure. 

Same goes for the app server platform.  There are non-Windows shops out there that would like to be able to use their existing *nix capabilities and infrastructure.  Also, JRun doesn't integrate well with certain enterprise single sign-on/identity management solutions. 

I don't expect that it's easy to Connect completely platform agnostic, but it would be nice to have some options, you know?

**_dyun_**

Re: How can WE help YOU?

Thanks everyone for commenting...I'm writing all this stuff down and tracking it...keep the suggestions coming.

**_sgentzen_**

Re: How can WE help YOU?

Just noticed I forgot one that I'm pretty sure I've mentioned to people at Adobe before...

Proper integration with enterprise directory services. 

v6 wanted to download the LDAP directory into the local user database.

v7 adds in the ability to authenticate off an external LDAP but still just adds users that log in into the local database.

Problem is that if I'm inviting people to a meeting, I can only use the people picker to invite people that have already logged into the Adobe Connect instance.  Anyone in the LDAP directory that hasn't been to my Connect instance, I have to invite as a guest.  Not good.

Yeah, we can write something against the API to help it out, but that misses the point, really.  An application that wants to be an enterprise solution doesn't really work well when it wants to be its own island.  I shouldn't have to kludge things together to make it work.

**_dyun_**

Re: How can WE help YOU?

Also, for those of us that don't have a lot of dev resources it would be nice to have a more centralized way to find and try/buy third-party developed pods.

Have you checked out the Acrobat Connect Exchange yet?
http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/exchange/i … &loc=en_us

There are some great examples of Meeting Apps created using the CollaboraitonBuilder SDK. 

Also you can see which of our partners do development on the CollaborationBuilder SDK for custom apps on the partner page:
http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobatco … /partners/

The team and I will be working hard on centralizing all of this disparate information together so you all can easily find it as time goes on.

Best,
David

**_sgentzen_**

Re: How can WE help YOU?

Have you checked out the Acrobat Connect Exchange yet?

I want to say that I haven't, but it looks familiar.  Will have to look closer.

Also you can see which of our partners do development on the CollaborationBuilder SDK for custom apps on the partner page:
http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobatco … /partners/

I have seen that.  We are working with a third party on a dev project now.

The team and I will be working hard on centralizing all of this disparate information together so you all can easily find it as time goes on.

That would be really good.

**_philip.roy_**

Re: How can WE help YOU?

The team and I will be working hard on centralizing all of this disparate information together so you all can easily find it as time goes on.

I would like to pick up on this point, as I do find it confusing.

There's great tutorials listed here....
http://www.connectusers.com/tutorials/

And some...but not all of these, are listed here also....
http://www.adobe.com/resources/acrobatconnect/

So it gets a bit confusing as to where to look and where to point colleagues to. In the end, I've taken the links onto my own site for staff, so they don't get confused as to where to look!

Centralising would be a great idea! :-)

Cheers,

Phil

**_dyun_**

Re: How can WE help YOU?

Adobe Presenter 7 is useless until the Edit Audio/Sync issue is fixed.
This will help many of us.

Hi Robert,

I just checked with the Presenter Product Manager Paresh who said that this bug should have been fixed as part of the Presenter 7.0.1 patch.  The patch can be obtained through automatic product update. Selecting updates in the Presenter help menu. It can also be downloaded and installed from adobe.com.

Visit this technote for more info: http://www.adobe.com/go/kb404919

If you have updated and are still encountering this issue, please let me know.

Best,
David

**_NewzGuy_**

Re: How can WE help YOU?

I've already invested in Pro.
You mean there's more info at the beta site than here in the "Pro" area?
Or am I in the wrong spot!

dyun, I'll take this one. ;)

NewzGuy-
You should try ConnectNow:
http://www.adobe.com/acom/connectnow/
It's a great, free alternative for quick collaborations and online meetings, powered by Adobe. It'll also give you a good feel for the Connect platform itself, and from there you can gauge if it'll be worth an investment in your "business-future".
-Jeff

**_kova4_**

Re: How can WE help YOU?

I appresciate your eagerness to help and understand the community - I have noticed that from most of the connect professionals in tech support -

However - (and I know you knew that was comming) I think we need to fix the VOIP - there is an inherent problem with C7 that our organization has a ticket in with support - (we are working with Rudy - he is great BTW) - but understand that your great differentiating factor to all other systems is your ability to mix voice and video/movement thru the flash engine - WebX can't - MS live absolutely blows - and go to mtg etc. all can't hold a candle to you - why ? because of the VOIP and video - please make this a priority with Engineering - I had to roll back to 6 because 7 was not reliable - see post -

http://www.connectusers.com/forums/cucb … hp?id=1150

It is a problem and I know you guys are working on it - but I want to use some of the new features - fix it Pleasse -

**_kova4_**

Re: How can WE help YOU?

Not to be a jerk, but to demonstrate the severity of the problem - here is a link to a few large customers of yours that are experienceing the same issues - I am not making this &**&&*& up ...

http://meeting.psu.edu/node/456

**_jameslloyd_**

Re: How can WE help YOU?

Hello David,

I am at the lowest point of despair about this product.  We are currently doing RFP for Moodle hosting because our Connect Pro Training is completely useless.  It is never been possible for a team manager to see a view of team members who have training yet to complete - to see which learners are falling behind or having difficulty.  I have had to manually build reports by subtracting completions from an external list of courses.  How in any way of thinking does this serve learning management?

Also, it is clear that hosted customers are treated as lesser customers.  This spring we were denied the v7 reporting features, and even the poor Team reporting we had in version 6 was removed! 

It seems that all communications to Connect customers are in regards to licensed accounts - even your response to download the v7.0.1 patch - wow - do we already have that because we are hosted or, ooops, forgot about those hosted customers - maybe they need that patch too.

And yes, VOIP has been very problematic for us lately and again, as a hosted customer I have to wade through several DAYS of support escalation before I can even talk to a tech that has any idea of the product capabilities and how they are/are not functioning.

It looks like the end is near - and I had so much hope for this product.

Good luck with the new postion.

Last edited by **_jameslloyd_** (2008-09-03 10:33:41)

**_sean_at_RealEyes_**

Re: How can WE help YOU?

Dave,

Make the video pod go higher than 7.5 fps for hosted and 15fps for licensed customers. 

Our custom video tool to get Connect to 30 fps is getting request once a day by new and existing clients, so its clearly a need and something the product team can easily enable.

**_Carri.Saari_**

Re: How can WE help YOU?

I would love to see Voice separate from Camera. It is confusing to end users who don't regularly use these types of apps. it might also allow for more customized audio/video applications.

We have been testing several configurations for site-to-site small group web conferencing. Managing audio devices separate from the web cam is cumbersome/troublesome.

**_rexyf84_**

Re: How can WE help YOU?

Hi everyone. We've recently have integrated active directory to Adobe Connect. At first we had some troubles getting the users to sync and all but later on found out that the reason why Adobe doesn't seem to get the users of a particular organizational unit (OU) was that the attributes of that particular OU was incomplete (no last names) and we've corrected this now all users can be sync. Now what we're trying to do is to get the group objects of the that OU in active directory to populate the Adobe Connect Directory. We have mapped it the same way we did with that of the users but don't get the user objects. Can you help us on this. Probably we're missing something again here.. thanks ....

**_carolax_**

Re: How can WE help YOU?

If you stumble across our Connect account rep, you might want him or her to contact the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Public Health. As Connect 7 problems keep piling up, we need to buy some engineering help onsite and determine possible growth plans for our license, but nobody at Adobe seems to want to talk to us.

**_dyun_**

Re: How can WE help YOU?

carolax, sorry about that.  your info has been forwarded on to the appropriate parties.