What is the difference between rooms under the ‘Meetings’ and ‘Seminars’ tabs?

Posted on by ianjustingetconnect

With some of the changes to the Adobe licensing for Connect 9.4, it is going to be reasonably common for Connect accounts to have access to both licensing types.  This post is intended to help you understand the main differences between the licenses.

For information on how to administer and assign the licenses, please see the Blog Post here.

The differences in the capacity of the rooms is entirely a function of the license you have purchased.  You can check you license capacity as per the instructions below:

  • Concurrent Participants license – Go to ‘Administration’>’Account’>’Account Summary’ and next to ‘Meeting’ you will see ‘Concurrent Attendee Pricing Model’.  Look for ‘Meeting Peak Concurrent Users:’ and this will tell you the capacity of your license.  You may have any combination of meeting rooms running as long as the total participant count does not exceed this number.
  • Named Hosts license – Go to ‘Administration’>’Account’>’Account Summary’ and next to ‘Meeting’ you will see ‘Named Host Pricing Model’.  Look for ‘Meeting Hosts:’ and the numbers after this line reflect how many meeting hosts you have assigned and the total number of hosts available to you, so ‘3/5’ means you have assigned 3 of the 5 hosts available to you.  Each of your assigned hosts may have up to 100 participants in their room.  They may not have more than 1 room running at a time.
  • Named Webinar Manager license – Go to ‘Administration’>’Account’>’Account Summary’ and next to ‘Seminars’ you will see ‘Webinar 100 (or 500 or 1000) Managers:’ and the numbers after this line reflect how many seminar hosts you have assigned and the total number of hosts available to you, so ‘3/5’ means you have assigned 3 of the 5 hosts available to you.  Each of these assigned hosts may have up to the number of participants noted in the license in their full seminar room. (100, 500 or 1000).
  • Shared Webinar Manager license – Go to ‘Administration’>’Account’>’Account Summary’ and next to ‘Seminars’ you will see ‘Seminar Administrators’ and the numbers after this line reflect how many seminar hosts you have assigned and the total number of hosts available to you.  In the case of a Shared Webinar Manager license the available hosts is unlimited, so ‘3/Unlimited’ means you have assigned 3 of the hosts available to you.  Each of these assigned hosts may have up to the number of participants noted in the license in their full seminar room.  You can find the capacity of your Shared Seminar Room license from the Blog Post here.

What is the difference between the ‘Meeting’ licenses and the ‘Seminars’ licenses?

Functionality – The only real difference in functionality is the availability of the ‘Engagement Dashboard’.  A regular Named Host or Concurrent Participant license does not give access to the Engagement Dashboard.  To have access to the Engagement Dashboard you need to be in the ‘Event Managers’, ‘Webinar nnn Managers’ or ‘Seminar Administrators’ group.

Scheduling – The regular Named Host or Concurrent Participant licenses are reservationless and the full licensing capacity is immediately available to you.  A Named Webinar Manager or Shared Webinar Manager license functions a little differently in that you have some options on how the license is used:

  • Ad-Hoc or  Instant Sessions – When you enter your Seminar Room, you will see a message in the top-right’ corner that tells you that you are in ‘Stand-by Mode’.  This means that you are not actually using the full license capacity.  In this mode you can have up to 10 participants in total (including yourself) in the room.  This is intended to allow you to prepare for full sessions without compromising the full webinar license.  You can have up to 5 Seminar Rooms running in ‘Stand-by Mode’ at any time with up to 10 participants to allow you to prepare.  If you want to go to the full license the you would click ‘New Instant Session’ and provided nobody else has the webinar license booked then you can start a session right away.  For instant webinars, enter the room and click ‘New Instant Session.
  • Scheduled Sessions –  If you want to book your seminar room more formally, you should go to ‘Seminars’>’Seminar Sessions’ and ‘New Seminar Session’.  Here you can book the full webinar license and ensure that it is reserved for your meeting.  If the seminar room is scheduled in this manner, the option to start a ‘New Instant Session’ will not allow another user to overwrite your booking, they will see a message that the license is already booked at this time, they would be able to use the room in ‘Stand-by Mode’ of course, provided not all of the ‘stand-by Mode’ sessions are in use (5 in total).

As you can see from the notes above, if you want to use the webinar licenses in a ‘first-come-first-served’ mode then you can, but this does risk your full webinar license being unavailable if it has been double-booked.  If you want to guarantee your full webinar license is available then you should ensure you book the seminar sessions formally.

Event Manager and Registration – If you use the ‘Event Management’ tab to create a registration for your webinar then the seminar room will be automatically scheduled and the license blocked off for that period so you do not need to schedule the room again.