Let’s face it: if you are using an online meeting solution chances are you are not using it to conduct a meeting with your neighbor, but rather someone located somewhere far away on this planet. Business is international and we have all managed to agree on a language to communicate with. But still we enjoy it when a business partner or colleague tries himself or herself in our native language even if they hardly get the sentence out. So the question is: if we appreciate the effort of others to address us in our language, why don’t online meeting tools let us address invitees in their own languages? Continue reading
Native vs. cross-platform distinction and Android vs. iOS
The market for web conferencing solutions is constantly evolving and to make sure our rankings are accurate we have updated our evaluation criteria in two major areas: native vs. cross-platform solutions and smartphone and tablet support. Continue reading
Cisco WebEx Meetings introduces a file library – pain or gain?
The latest version of WebEx Meetings introduces new functionality such as being able to post comments in the meeting space and share meeting notes and recordings. Most prominently meeting hosts and attendees can now attach files to meetings and manage them in a file library.
This file library was the hottest topic of discussion during our tests and we are not sure if it benefits all WebEx users. The two basic usage scenarios are: Continue reading
ClickMeeting adds live testing functionality
We recently tested the new features of ClickMeeting and found that the enhancements seem to be moving the tool towards webinar and online training scenarios. The testing feature allows the presenter to create surveys and tests and to receive real time results. This feature update allows for a new mode of collaboration with ClickMeeting. Continue reading
Conversion Formula for Stars and German Grades Modified
At the beginning of this week, we updated our web conferencing software rankings to change the way we calculate the German grades for ranked tools and their criteria. The German grades also have the important role of governing the amount of stars (or "dots" for criteria) a tool receives, and so this change directly influences the visualization of our rankings for all users.
Why did we do this? Continue reading
WebEx Meetings: Seasonable scope of functionalities with similar look & feel
WebEx Meetings is Cisco’s new online collaboration tool and will eventually come to replace the current WebEx Meeting Center. The introduction to the market happened without great ado which is a bit strange since the software has a lot to offer. So what is new about WebEx Meetings?
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Online Meeting Tools Review updates its scoring
Web conferencing has changed noticeably over the last couple of years. Initially participants of an online meeting were satisfied with looking at another person’s screen or collaborating on a virtual whiteboard. With the broad availability of advanced technology – e.g. the ubiquitousness of decent webcams – expectations have risen and we see that this has manifested itself in two specific user requirements:
1) VoIP- and Phone-based audio conferences
2) Video conferencing
Needless to say that users expect both functionalities to be integrated fully into a web conferencing solution. Continue reading
Microsoft’s Lync Online is not for everyone
When we last tested Lync Online the tool ranked 15th in our comparison of online meeting solutions. Back then the software had just passed the Beta phase so we wanted to now see how the online collaboration tool had been advanced over time.
Our first finding: Lync Online is not meant to be used as a standalone self-service web conferencing solution and setting it up requires substantial IT expertise. It may sound unproblematic that you need to open and configure your "personal" Office 365 cloud instance to run Lync Online, but we find Office 365 to be a very complex SaaS platform – at least for those of us who are not IT professionals or well-trained Microsoft partners. Continue reading
Blackboard Collaborate: an LMS gone astray
Normally Blackboard Collaborate wouldn’t have made it into our ranking. The vendor fails to deliver one element we see as crucial: making pricing information openly and easily accessible. Even searching the Blackboard website for quite some time left us none the wiser in that regard. Now there are two reasons we decided to test and rank Blackboard Collaborate after all:
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Our test portal now offers made-to-measure test dossiers
Last weekend, the biggest update in the six-year history of webconferencing-test.com went live. Almost all aspects of our portal have been reworked to enhance the value and the usability of the site:
- Compare Tools Pro now allows visitors to compile a tailored dossier of data from our 30-plus tool tests, offering detailed information on over 80 functions and criteria for all solutions. The service (which is subject to a charge) supports organizations in simplifying and accelerating the expensive and time-consuming process of evaluating web conferencing platforms.