Developer: Collaborating up there in the Cloud

Collaborating up there, in the Cloud

Let's explore some of the features of LotusLive Engage, the latest online collaboration and social networking platform from IBM

Swapnil Arora

Tuesday, May 26, 2009

BANGALORE, INDIA: 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.

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