Claripoint Vista is a web collaboration tool developed by Claripoint, a UK-based company, that allows meeting presenters to collaborate in real-time with invited participants. The company has set out to create a product that "needs no explanation and no instructions, just 15 minutes of familiarisation."
To a large extent they have achieved their aim, because Vista has a useful set of features that are easy and intuitive to use.
Presenters and attendees can login to a meeting room through Claripoint's website or use specific URLs that take you straight to the login page required. There is also a browser test option on the website, so that you can check whether your browser is compatible with the service and your role within the meeting; presenter or participant.
After logging in, a presenter has all of the tools necessary to conduct a meeting accessible from a toolbar running along the top of the screen.
The Account Tools button displays a dropdown list of options including:
- Manage Presentation - Upload PowerPoint presentations ( maximum size of 64Mb) for display in the meeting. The upload process is swift and includes the conversion of PowerPoint files into a series of static slides. Video slides and web pages are also accomodated. Additionally, you can preview slides and add presentation notes to them.
- Reception Area - Set the appearance of the reception area, where attendees can be assembled before the start of a meeting. Here you can display a web page or one or more slides. For multiple slides you can set a cycling interval to control how often they change.
- Prepare Polls - Devise multiple-choice polling questions to pose to the audience during the presentation.
- My Preferences - Configure your personal details which are displayed to the audience and create a business card in vCard format.
- Activity Log - Obtain some meeting statistics such as duration.
- Manage Presenters - Specify new presenters for the room
The presenter has a number of meeting tools available to facilitate interaction with the audience:
Presentation Manager: This component allows a meeting presenter to easily broadcast PowerPoint presentations to all meeting attendees, and is the product's major competitive strength.
In my brief test, the slideshow broadcast ran smoothly, without problems and the quality of the slides is very good.
Once a presentation has been uploaded, it is extremely easy to move backwards and forwards through the presentation or to jump to a specific slide.
There is also a live pointer that allows the presenter to mark-up key areas of the content being presented in real-time.
PageShare: Vista also offers an outstanding optional co-browsing facility (extra cost) called "PageShare". PageShare allows the presenter to display web pages to a maximum of 20 meeting participants and integrates full co-scrolling, co-filling and shared-pointer abilities.
Snapshot: This is an ActiveX component that enables you to take snapshots of your desktop and broadcast them in the meeting. You get three modes in which you can select parts of the screen to snapshot: Area (Rubber Band), Full Screen and Window. This is an optional component.
Vu Presenter: Another optional ActiveX component (in beta testing at time of writing) that lets you display and share applications. It allows one-way or two-way communication and has various display options including the facility to share the entire desktop or just particular applications.
Audience Manager: This component allows the presenter to decide how the audience should gain access to the meeting:
Manual - Presenter has to explicitly grant access to the attendee. The attendee waits in the reception area until access is granted.
Secured - Attendee must enter a PIN/password to enter the meeting, otherwise they are held in the reception area.
Public - Attendees can join the meeting as soon as they login.
There is also a Pie Chart tool to tell the presenter how much of the audience is in the meeting.
Incoming Questions: This module enables a presenter to receive typed questions from the audience. The questions can be managed and even displayed to the audience along with the name of the questioner.
Audience Polling: The questions that are prepared using the Account Tools can be put to the audience from this facility. New questions can be created and responses viewed.
Send File to Audience: This is a file transfer utility (maximum file size 64Mb) where the presenter can send files to the audience. The files can be downloaded by the attendees or emailed to another destination.
Logout Audience: Lets a presenter instantly force the audience out of a meeting.
A uniquely powerful feature, pioneered in the past by Polycom WebOffice and later by WebEx is one allowing presenters to be given real-time feedback about how the delivery status of each slide on the screens of each attendee. Multi-color traffic lights clearly display, once each second, the status of each
attendee:
Red - The audience member has not yet begun to download the slide
Amber - The audience member is currently downloading a slide
Green - The audience member has received the last slide sent to them
Grey - This special state means that contact has been lost with the audience member.
Text chat, remote control, VoIP audio and video-conferencing are not available in Vista. These omissions are partly addressed by the provision of two other Claripoint products designed to be fully compatible with Vista.
Traditional phone-based audio-conferencing, that allows the presenter and the participants to talk to each other during a meeting, and Playback for recording and archiving live conferences.
Unlimited usage licences are available for both Premier (fully featured) or Lite (only with the PowerPoint Show feature) versions of Vista.
In my opinion, although Claripoint has many admirable qualities, not least of which is ease of use, like a number of products in this market, it is over-priced.
This is further highlighted when you consider the lack of some key established complementary features like VoIP or text chat.
If Claripoint could rectify these stumbling blocks, Vista would be a product to challenge the best out there.
For now: Not recommended
More info: http://www.claripoint.com
Pricing: 1 Presenter and 10 meeting participants for a 12 month contract -
Premier version: USD 3650 (additional Presenters add USD 400)
Lite version: USD 1830
Free trial: http://www.claripoint.com/public/demo_request.php
Online manual: http://www.claripoint.com/help/C1/index.html
