Table Of Contents

Cisco MeetingPlace for Outlook Concepts and Functions

MeetingPlace Concepts

The Meeting Process

User Profiles

Guest Access

Meeting Preferences

MeetingPlace for Outlook Concepts

About MeetingPlace for Outlook

The Scheduling and Notification Process

Meetings Scheduled from MeetingPlace for Outlook

Meetings Scheduled from MeetingTime or MeetingPlace Web

The Process of Attending a Meeting

Windows Services

What Is New in This Release

Cisco MeetingPlace for Outlook Concepts and Functions

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To understand Cisco MeetingPlace for Outlook functionality, it is helpful to understand its role in the entire Cisco MeetingPlace system. This chapter provides an overview of both MeetingPlace and MeetingPlace for Outlook.

This chapter contains the following sections:

•MeetingPlace Concepts

•MeetingPlace for Outlook Concepts

•What Is New in This Release

MeetingPlace Concepts

MeetingPlace uses the existing telephony and/or IP-based infrastructure in your organization to provide voice conferencing over standard PSTN and IP telephones.

MeetingPlace can also be integrated with the standard business applications in your organization, such as e-mail and groupware applications. To facilitate integration with these resources, system options are installed on a Microsoft Windows software-based server that communicates with MeetingPlace over your network.

To facilitate advanced user interfaces and integration with other shared network resources, the MeetingPlace Audio Server also connects to your LAN or WAN and communicates with MeetingPlace desktop software products.

The Meeting Process

The MeetingPlace system does more than just bridge callers together at the time of a meeting. MeetingPlace also provides meeting-related services, including the functions in the following table. MeetingPlace for Outlook facilitates usage of all of these functions:

Service	Description
Scheduling meeting resources	When users schedule meetings on MeetingPlace, the system reserves the date, time, and length of the meeting for a specified number of attendees. In addition, users can schedule other resources, such as disk space for meeting recordings and data attachments.
Notifying attendees	When users schedule a MeetingPlace meeting, they can specify a list of invitees. MeetingPlace for Outlook automatically sends notifications to meeting invitees.
Distributing meeting materials	Users can attach documents at any time before, during, or after a meeting. These attachments can be agendas, working documents, action items, or URLs. MeetingPlace acts as the repository for these attachments and can provide access to them through the Web or e-mail.
Web conferencing	MeetingPlace not only allows users to view attached documents, but can also enable them to participate in web conferences for real-time application sharing and collaboration.
Recording meetings	Meeting attendees can record their meetings on MeetingPlace. After the meeting, attendees can select their recording from the Attachments/Recordings page for the meeting and view it from their PC. Users can also dial into MeetingPlace over the telephone to listen to the voice portion only.
Voice comments	In addition to recordings, MeetingPlace lets users submit voice comments that other attendees can listen to at any time. Those who cannot attend meetings can actively contribute to meetings. When users leave voice comments, MeetingPlace can automatically relay the comment to meeting attendees through e-mail.

User Profiles

Like other internal company resources, many MeetingPlace functions require users to identify themselves via a user profile. A user profile consists of the following:

Information Type	Description
Security information	User ID, password. User IDs must be alphanumeric and limited to 17 characters.
Personal information	Name, time zone, default billing code, and so on.
Class-of-service privileges that allow users to access certain features	Scheduling, outdialing, recording, and so on.
Addressing information	Telephone, e-mail, pager, and so on.
Default meeting preferences	Announced entries, roll calls, automatic notifications, and so on.

Meeting schedulers must have a MeetingPlace user profile. Additionally, we recommend that users who frequently participate in meetings also have MeetingPlace user profiles.

Guest Access

MeetingPlace also provides optional guest access to the system. To facilitate meetings with those who do not have user profiles, MeetingPlace allows guests to both join and review materials (including recordings) for unrestricted meetings.

Meeting Preferences

Meeting preferences indicate how the meeting will be run. MeetingPlace automatically assigns meeting preferences based on defaults specified in the user profile of the scheduler.  However, meeting schedulers can choose to override their defaults on a meeting-by-meeting basis.

Examples of meeting preferences include:

•Whether to announce callers automatically as they attend or depart.

•Whether to require that attendees enter an alphanumeric password before entering the meeting.

•Whether to allow attendees to take a roll call.

MeetingPlace for Outlook Concepts

This section provides an overview of MeetingPlace for Outlook and discusses how it integrates with your MeetingPlace and Microsoft Exchange servers to schedule meetings and distribute notifications.

About MeetingPlace for Outlook

MeetingPlace for Outlook integrates MeetingPlace with the Exchange server in your company. This integration allows users to schedule and attend MeetingPlace meetings using their Outlook client and receive e-mail invitations for meetings they have been invited to. Users can choose to accept an invitation and have the meeting automatically appear in their Outlook calendar or decline the invitation if they cannot attend the meeting.

A full installation of MeetingPlace for Outlook allows users to:

•Receive Outlook calendar invitations for MeetingPlace meetings, including update notifications for rescheduled meetings.

•Attend MeetingPlace meetings with a click-to-attend hypertext link in their meeting invitation or Outlook calendar (requires MeetingPlace Web).

•Schedule MeetingPlace meetings using an HTML-based form in their Outlook calendar.

Figure 1-1 MeetingPlace for Outlook Scheduling Form

MeetingPlace for Outlook has three main components:

•MeetingPlace for Outlook Notification Services

•MeetingPlace for Outlook Client Services

•MeetingPlace for Outlook Client

The MeetingPlace for Outlook Notification and Client Services components form the MeetingPlace for Outlook application, which is installed on a Windows 2000 server.

The MeetingPlace for Outlook Client is installed on the computers of your end users and allows them to schedule from their Microsoft Outlook interface using the MeetingPlace for Outlook scheduling form.

The Scheduling and Notification Process

The scheduling and notification process depends on whether the meeting was scheduled using Microsoft Outlook or another scheduling client, such as MeetingTime or MeetingPlace Web.

Meetings Scheduled from MeetingPlace for Outlook

The following illustrates the scheduling and notification process when a user schedules a meeting through Microsoft Outlook:

Figure 1-2 How Meetings Are Scheduled Using Outlook

Different types of meetings can be scheduled with a variety of options, such as recurring meetings or meetings with restricted access. See Chapter 5, "Using Cisco MeetingPlace for Outlook" for details. To modify the appearance and content of the meeting invitation, see Chapter 4, "Customizing Meeting Notifications". When a meeting invitation arrives in a user's e-mail Inbox, the user clicks a button to accept or decline. This response is then e-mailed back to the scheduler, and the Exchange server keeps track of which attendees plan to attend the meeting.

When a meeting is scheduled from Microsoft Outlook, MeetingPlace Audio Server cannot track which invitees have MeetingPlace user profiles and therefore treats everyone as a guest invitee. This limitation prevents the system from automatically outdialing and paging users based on their attend settings.

You as system manager can customize the appearance and content of the meeting scheduling and notification forms.

Meetings Scheduled from MeetingTime or MeetingPlace Web

The following illustrates the scheduling and notification process when a user schedules a meeting using MeetingTime or MeetingPlace Web:

Figure 1-3 How Meetings Are Scheduled Using MeetingTime or MeetingPlace Web

When users accept or decline these invitations, the Exchange server forwards these messages directly to the meeting scheduler, but does not keep track of the information in its database.

The Process of Attending a Meeting

With MeetingPlace Web installed and running on the MeetingPlace for Outlook server, users can attend meetings with a click-to-attend link located at the end of their meeting invitation. When users accept an invitation, the meeting information and a click-to-attend link appear in their Outlook calendar.

Figure 1-4 MeetingPlace Notification

When users click the click-to-attend link, their web browser opens and they are taken to a sign-in page to enter the meeting. For details about attending meetings via web browser, see the documentation for MeetingPlace Web, available via the link in Obtaining Documentation, page ix.

Windows Services

For ongoing communication with the MeetingPlace Audio Server, MeetingPlace for Outlook includes the following Windows services:

•MeetingPlace Notification Gateway

•MeetingPlace Gateway SIM

•MeetingPlace for Outlook Service

These programs are implemented using the standard Windows services architecture. Therefore, you can use standard mechanisms to start and stop the services, view their event log, and remotely monitor their activity.

What Is New in This Release

MeetingPlace for Outlook (release 4.3.0) includes the following new features:

Feature	Description
Support for Outlook 2003 and Exchange 2003	MeetingPlace for Outlook is now compatible with Outlook 2003 and Exchange 2003.
MeetingPlace properties can now be modified when rescheduling recurring meetings	When recurring meetings are rescheduled using the MeetingPlace tab in Outlook, meeting parameters can now be changed.
Online help	A Help link on the scheduling and notification forms takes users to a comprehensive help system for MeetingPlace for Outlook.