iLinc Web and Video Conferencing Blog

iConnect 2010 - 3 Million Miles Not Traveled

James Powers — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 18:41:14 +0000

We wrapped up iConnect 2010 yesterday and it was fabulous! This year we took the plunge and held our annual user conference 100% virtually and what a difference! We had nearly 1,300 people registered and 800 participated over the 2 day conference. That was about 3 times the number of participants we had last year. Our customers suggested we make the event virtual this year so that more organizations and more people within their organizations could attend…so we did and they came!

As always, we had two tracks going on simultaneously, a leadership track which focused on tips and tricks for managing a successful organization in the virtual age and a user track, which focused on practical uses and best practices for end users of our products. We had some awesome speakers again this year including Chris Gosk of Global Knowledge, Noelle Archambeau of SAP Global Marketing, and Melanie Turek, one of the Principal Analysts at Frost & Sullivan. These are just a few of the many engaging speakers from the event.

With participants from over 20 countries, our patented Green Meter measured savings of over 1.3 million pounds of CO2 emissions and nearly 3 million air miles from being flown!! This of course doesn’t even take into consideration the valuable time and productivity losses that occur when employees travel.

Our primary focus is and has always been to give our customers the best products, training and customer service in the industry and this was just one more way to give customers what they need while having the ability to showcase what we do firsthand! I hope that everyone who attended felt that it was time well spent! For those of you that could not or did not attend, many of the conference PowerPoints and recordings will be posted on our website by the end of the week. I would invite you to listen to them, either for the first time or as a recap of what you learned at the conference. I hope to “see” you all next year!

The Gift that Keeps on Giving

admin — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 23:07:43 +0000

The holiday season is upon us! While many are still out doing their last minute shopping and trying to find the perfect gifts, we’re as busy as elves since our return from Salesforce.com’s Dreamforce event a few weeks ago where we met so many incredible people. And now, we feel like we’re bringing Christmas a little early to many of them as they migrate over to the iLinc web conferencing platform and discover the amazing tricks and time-saving techniques our products offer, particularly when integrated with Salesforce.

We’re seeing our customers’ happy faces as they watch new potential customers register for their free webinars and online sales demos and registration information is automatically sent to Campaign, Contact and Lead records in Salesforce.

The monotony of downloading and exporting attendee information is a thing of the past as they sit back and enjoy the success of their online presentations knowing their attendance data has been recorded in near real-time into Salesforce. Instead of manipulating data-feeds and struggling with imports, sales teams can get to work right away following up with attendees and working the pipeline.

With 2010 just around the corner, is your New Year’s goal to increase sales (despite the economy) or to “simplifiy” your processes? If so, now may be the time you can realistically cross both of these goals off your list! When you integrate iLinc for Salesforce into your workflow, both things happen simultaneously!

View a demo today and give yourself a gift that will keep on giving.

Check out iLinc’s Dreamforce session here!

iLinc to be Gold Sponsor at Dreamforce 2009

Camie Maslowski — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 21:52:59 +0000

Salesforce is getting ready to hold its annual cloud computing event, Dreamforce, November 17-20, 2009 in San Francisco at the Moscone Center. This is a golden opportunity for Salesforce’s customers, as well as partners (they have 200 partner sponsors slated) who create applications to work in tandem with their own, to rub elbows with some 12,000 other attendees. Participants will learn how to maximize their ROI, have the chance to meet with product teams, listen to expert users and attend hands-on training sessions. iLinc is very excited to be a part of another great event this year as a Gold sponsor!

iLinc’s VP Products, Frank Gartland, and VP Sales, Jason Walker, along with Mark Silber of Qualcomm (one of iLinc’s longstanding customers) are holding a session on Wednesday the 18th at 3:30 p.m. in West Mezzanine 270 entitled Automatic Harmony: Empower Sales and Marketing with Better Webinar Data. They will be discussing automating data capture from your Web conferencing system and input into Salesforce, automating lead warming and teaching your sales team how to better qualify leads by tracking attendee behavior during virtual events.

Please stop by our booth too to register for a $1,000 gift certificate to Xperience Days, where you can plan the ultimate team-building activity for your company! We hope to see you there!

iLinc for Salesforce Chosen as “App of the Week”

Christine Olivas — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 19:02:18 +0000

We are happy to announce that iLinc for Salesforce, our web conferencing integration with Salesforce CRM, has been chosen as the Force.com AppExchange “App of the Week”. This cutting edge solution, available for download on the AppExchange, allows organizations to get more out of their marketing webinars, virtual training sessions and online sales demos by ensuring that all registration and attendance data is sent to Salesforce Lead, Contact and Campaign records in near real-time.

To anyone who has ever hosted an online event, this is earth-shattering news. No more wasting time downloading information about registrants from a web conferencing system and then manually uploading it to Salesforce CRM without knowing for sure how to tie that data to existing records.

Now, marketing, sales and customer service professionals can be confident that every time a new lead or existing contact registers for or attends an event, information about them is being automatically recorded in the appropriate place within Salesforce CRM. This means that they can interact with these leads and contacts in an impactful way—whether it’s creating workflows based off of attendance duration or having your customer experience team follow up with loyal customers who attended your training webinar. The possibilities are endless.

We are honored to have our app higlighted on The AppExchange Blog and excited to share our integration with the Force.com community. If you would like to learn more about how the integration can streamline your customer lifecycle and help you drive revenue, visit www.ilinc.com/salesforce today.

iLinc Attends 2009 SYNNEX National Conference

Camie Maslowski — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 19:57:55 +0000

We recently participated in SYNNEX’s National Conference in Greenville, SC. SYNNEX Corporation is one of the largest technology distribution companies in the world - with sales of $8 billion per year and their annual conference attracts 250 of the top technology resellers in the country.

iLinc and SYNNEX have a strategic distribution relationship centered on the SaaS Provisioning Portal. The portal enables approximately 4,000 SYNNEX resellers to access the rapidly-expanding Software As A Service (SaaS) market for iLinc web and video conferencing.

As a founding vendor of the SaaS Provisioning Portal at SYNNEX, iLinc was on hand to help launch it to the reseller community and the millions of customers they serve.

All SYNNEX resellers can register for a trial of iLinc at www.ilinc.com/synnex.

Measure Your Increased Productivity

Camie Maslowski — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 17:49:35 +0000

Many companies are using web conferencing to avoid the headaches and productivity losses associated with travel. In order to justify the cost of these services, many companies would like to have a way to quantify these cost savings. That’s where iLinc’s Green Meter comes in. We received a patent last week for our Green Meter which makes it possible to do just that!

The patent includes the application, algorithms and processes embedded within the core iLinc technology that tracks the dollars saved and greenhouse emissions avoided when customers use iLinc web conferencing for meetings, events and training sessions rather than traveling by car, train or airplane. The Green Meter detects the locations of people attending web meetings from their IP addresses. The distance between the meeting leader and meeting participants is measured calculating how much money is saved as well as pounds of CO2 emissions saved. The information is then provided to customers in real-time. iLinc is the only web conferencing provider with a tool like this!

We’d love to hear how you’re using the Green Meter to maximize your time and productivity!

To Share or Not to Share - That is the Question!

Greg Tewes — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 23:24:44 +0000

When presenting in an iLinc session, you are provided with many different tools that you can use to deliver your content. These range from PowerBoards, White Boards, WebSync, Polling Questions, and of course the most versatile option – Sharing. Whenever you are looking to present content that doesn’t seem to fit into the other options, Sharing is the tool you should turn to! Whether you are looking to walk your students through a Course Syllabus PDF or you’re demonstrating your own software program to a prospect, the iLinc Sharing tool is the tool that will get the job done for you.

Most presenters learn how to Share very early on in their web-presenter careers, but there are a few options which you may not be completely familiar with that can drastically improve the effectiveness of your presentation. iLinc provides three different Sharing options, each of which have benefits and prove quite useful depending on the scenario.

Desktop Sharing – Your attendees will view everything on your monitor. This means that your attendees will see your every move and can fluidly follow along as you move from one application to another.

Benefits:

Quick and easy to start
Switch between applications on the fly
Best option for new users getting started
TIP! – Close email and instant messaging programs before starting so that your attendees do not see these!

Application Sharing – You can select specific applications to share with your attendees. This prevents your users from seeing anything you do not want them to see. This also gives the presenter more control over the end user’s experience.

Benefits:

Most secure option for those concerned with privacy or those working with confidential materials
Users will not see instant messages or other windows which pop-up during the share
Great option for the security conscious and advanced users who like to multi-task
TIP! – Open all documents and programs you will be using ahead of time so you do not have to stop in the mid-sentence!

Region Sharing – Control the area of your screen being displayed. This option allows you to highlight a designated area of your screen to show. As the presenter, this gives you a re-sizable selection box which you can use to highlight a window or zoom in on an important paragraph of text.

Benefits:

Great for highlighting specific areas in an application or document
You can resize the selection area on the fly to expand or contract what your users are seeing
Perfect for demonstrating software applications, spreadsheets, text documents and other data-intensive applications
TIP! – For a more seamless presentation, make use of your Play/Pause buttons for additional control over what participants see!

This is the tip of the iceberg when it comes to presenting with iLinc’s Sharing tool but this should give you an idea of what may be the best option for your use case. The best part about it is that you can experiment with the different options and decide what works best for you! For more information, please review our KnowledgeBase and Quick Reference Guides on the iLinc Support page http://www.ilinc.com/support.

Thank you for choosing iLinc!

iLinc Internet Audio – Do’s & Don’ts

Greg Tewes — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 21:26:55 +0000

These days, with everyone looking to cut costs, it’s only natural to be focused on delivering the most cost-effective training, webinar or presentation. This of course raises the question of when to use Internet audio versus a traditional teleconference. Teleconferences are an easy way to get started with web conferencing but usually the cost of this option is greater. Depending upon the goals of your session, the audience you are targeting and your available budget, the answer may differ. If you need some advice in this area, we are always happy to help advise you on what may be the most appropriate option for your iLinc activity.

Assuming you have chosen to use iLinc’s Internet Audio option for your session, here are a couple points to keep in mind:

Always perform a dry-run or practice session with ALL presenters prior to the meeting. This will provide ample time to resolve any issues ahead of time as well as provide your presenter an opportunity to become familiar with the iLinc application. Also whenever possible, make sure they are in the same location and using the same hardware that they will be using for the live presentation. This will help to avoid any surprises on the day of your event.
Make sure your presenters have good quality headsets on their computers. A good headset could be the difference between a fantastic experience for your audience or a poor one. We recommend a number of devices ranging in price that will yield a high quality experience when used with iLinc.
Mute on entry – This is an option iLinc gives you that will mute all participants’ microphones upon joining your iLinc session. This should almost always be considered a ‘must’ for your session as it allows you, as the leader, to control when attendees can speak and also prevents users with poor audio setups from ruining the experience for others. When you are ready to open someone’s mic, simply right-click on their name and choose to un-mute their line.
iLinc also offers an option for a mixed teleconference & internet audio type of session. This option requires that your speakers dial into the teleconference line but participants will receive the option to either “Listen In” via their computer speakers or dial into the teleconference. It is important to note that those users choosing to “Listen In” over their computer speakers/headset will not be able to verbally speak back and forth with presenters on the teleconference line.
If you suspect that your users are not receiving the best experience possible when using iLinc’s Internet Audio option, please contact iLinc Technical Support to get help troubleshooting the issue. In most cases, we can readily identify the problem and recommend steps to improve the experience on all sides.

Please contact us if you have any additional questions or would like to discuss these points with iLinc Technical Support.

Thank you for choosing iLinc!

iLinc’s Newest Release Makes You the Hero of Your Online Meetings

Christine Olivas — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 16:41:06 +0000

We all know that one of the biggest keys to every company’s success is the ability to put their best face forward in every external encounter—whether it’s with prospects, shareholders, current customers or people coming across your name on a blog or social networking site. And while technology such as web conferencing can do a lot to help you promote your company in a positive light, a badly-executed board meeting, sales demo or marketing webinar can set you back (not to mention get you a flood of negative posts on Twitter!).

At iLinc, we are dedicated to providing our customers with web conferencing tools that allow them to create high-quality online sessions so that they can make a stellar impression on their boss, a hot new lead or a current customer seeking technical support. Our newest release, available in the fall of 2009, adds to our existing set of useful and engaging features (have you seen our iLinc for Salesforce integration yet?). Current hosted customers will automatically get access to:

Enterprise-class recording and editing tools. Set your recorder to run automatically, edit recordings online to free up your hard drive and then download them in Flash or SCORM-compliant formats.
Social networks integration. Share your web conferencing savings with your network. Post links to your newest webinars and training sessions on Facebook and Twitter. It really is as easy as a click of the mouse.
Intuitive and user-friendly home page. We’ve taken ease-of-use to the next level with clear buttons and links for the actions that users most often want to take when they first log in to their iLinc site.

Already an iLinc user? Look forward to an automatic upgrade in September and stay on top of the latest release news. Using a different online meeting provider and want to switch? Get a closer look at the iLinc difference at our live daily demo or contact sales today.

iLinc Fall 2009 Release FAQs

Christine Olivas — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 21:34:55 +0000

Q: Are all iLinc customers included in this release?

A: All iLinc hosted customers will automatically get access to the newest features in the Fall Release.

Q: Will I need to do anything for the upgrade?

A: No. your site will automatically be upgraded. The iLinc client will also upgrade automatically when you or your attendees first join a session after the release.

Q: Who will see the new Home page?

A: Only users who have the ability to add sessions will have access to the new Home page. Any user who does not have the ability to add sessions, like a student who can only view available sessions, will go directly to the Sessions page and to that user, it will appear as if nothing has changed.

Q: Can I turn off the new Home page?

A: Yes. The new home page can be disabled site-wide by going to Administration > Site, selecting the “Disable the Home Page Dashboard” checkbox and clicking “Submit”.

Q: What will happen to my existing recordings?

A: Your existing recordings will work just like they do now. You will be able to view them as activities and play them in session.

Q: Can my existing recordings be converted to the new format?

A: Yes. Please contact Support to schedule a time to have your existing recordings converted to the new format.

Q: Can I make new recordings available in session as content?

A: Yes. Once you have downloaded the recording, you will have the ability to upload a recording in the new format (as content to display).

Q: Can I disable some or all of the Social Networks Integration?

A: Yes. The Social Networks Integration can be disabled site-wide by going to Administration > Site, scrolling to Social Networks, adjusting the options and clicking “Submit”.

Q: If I upload video files, like FLV and SWF, as Media Link content, will I be charged storage fees?

A: Uploaded video files will be included in the current calculations used to determine storage fees.

Q: Can I really turn off the New User Wizard for new users on my site?

A: Yes. The New User Wizard can be disabled site-wide by going to Administration > Site, selecting the “Disable the New User Wizard” checkbox and clicking “Submit”.