From the Internet’s early days, companies have started tapping into the different potentials of web conferencing services. Now, decades after they were first practiced, web conferencing services have come a long way from merely sitting and watching virtual PowerPoint presentations to something that is more collaborative between members of teams that are dispersed across the country or around the world.
With the advent of peripheral devices, such as audio headsets and web cams, web conferencing services have undergone even more evolution. Now, web conferencing services allow people to sit in their offices and see and hear their co-workers as well as work on a project together in a hands-on fashion.
Companies are now taking to web conferencing services like bees to honey. They present the perfect solution to multinational concerns that worldwide corporations often experience in their offices located all over the world. And to address this need for more web conferencing services, more and more service providers are coming up with various applications equipped with the newest, most updated software programs to make web conferencing even more effective for the office.
But how exactly do web conferencing services work when members are located in different parts of the world? First, you need to evaluate the web conferencing services and what features they offer. The most common feature that can be found in almost all web conferencing software is interactive voice communications.
When you assess this basic feature of the web conferencing services, it is important that stress is placed on quality of the connection and not the connectivity itself. Connectivity should be a given in web conferencing services by now so it is only logical to focus on the quality of this basic feature. Try to find out if voice support of your web conferencing services is for point-to-point or multipoint. If your web conferencing services include video communications, bi-directional is a recommended attribute.
Other features that you would like to be included in your web conferencing services are document viewing, document sharing (modification by user and/or host), and text chat. There are also those that work to assist community members in communicating their availability, state, or presence. Multimedia features are also important to allow members to create and send multimedia messages. Additionally, some web conferencing services allow members or users to schedule and initiate live sessions on a reservation and ad hoc basis.
VoIP or Voice over Internet Protocol (IP) is a new feature in web conferencing services. It allows users to voice communicate over the Internet. It is supposed to make communication and interaction between members more efficient but it appears that not many web conferencing services are using this feature.