How will the Seminar Room changes in Connect 9.1 affect me?

Posted on by ianjustingetconnect

In Adobe Connect 9.1 there are some very significant changes to the way Seminar Rooms are scheduled.  There is a lot of documentation on this already from Adobe, but it is pretty deep in places and I thought a note on this Blog might help clarify the changes for GetConnect clients.

The detailed explanations of the seminar scheduling changes for Connect 9.1 can be found at the following links:

Some terms to clarify:

  • Seminar License – You have purchased one or more Seminar Licenses for your account.  Each of these licenses might give you the capability to build Seminar Rooms and run Seminar Sessions from say 200 to 1,500 attendees.  You can see the capacity of your Seminar License by following the instructions in the blog Post here.  Your Seminar License is represented by a folder under the ‘Seminar Rooms’ tab.
  • Seminar Room – You can build as many Seminar Rooms as you wish under each of your Seminar Licenses.  There is no limit to the number of Seminar Room you can create.  You might choose to build rooms that have different branding or different names and change the layouts in the rooms to suit the session.
  • Seminar Session – This is a change to the way Seminar Licenses are used in Connect as of version 9.1.  A ‘Seminar Session’ represents the period over which the Seminar Room  is to be used for a specific meeting and using the full capacity of your Seminar License.  In simple terms, you build a Seminar Room (e.g. ‘Marketing Room’) and then you schedule a Seminar Session for that room (e.g. ‘August 10th 10am Eastern Marketing Seminar’).  You can run a session up to the capacity you have in your license at that time.
  • Stand-by Mode – If you were to build a Seminar Room and you enter the room *without* creating (scheduling) a Seminar Session, the room will open in ‘Stand-by Mode’.  In this mode you can have up to 10 people in the room in this case and you would use this to prepare for the larger sessions.  You can run up to 5 Stand-by Mode Seminar Rooms at any one time under each of your Seminar Licenses.
  • Instant Session – If you are in ‘Standby Mode’ and there are no other sessions scheduled for this license, you can start a session dynamically, this is called an ‘Instant Session’ and you will see the option to do this from within your Seminar Room.  You cannot do this if there is a session already scheduled in this license.


Why is this change happening?

There are a few reasons for this change:

  • Licensing – From a licensing perspective, Adobe is enforcing the End User License Agreement (EULA).  This agreement has not changed since you purchased your Seminar License, but it is now being fully enforced.  The main point is to understand that you may only run one Seminar Session at a time under each of your Seminar Licenses plus up to 5 Seminar Rooms in Stand-by Mode.
  • Load Balancing – Forcing the requirement to schedule the Seminar Rooms (as Seminar Sessions) allows Adobe to manage the load on the server clusters and to ensure that the infrastructure is no overly taxed at any time.  Ultimately, this is something we would all want as we do not want to have one of our high-profile seminars fail due to issues with the capacity of the Adobe servers.
  • Practical Scheduling – The creation of the ‘Seminar Sessions’ concept is something that is a necessary addition in order to make this simple for your Seminar Hosts in the longer term.  Today (in Connect 9), to schedule a Seminar for a particular time, you would need to change the time in the description of your Seminar Room.  This works well for a single seminar session, but if you want to schedule multiple sessions for the same Seminar Room then this falls to pieces in a hurry, you would need to edit the dates in the Seminar Room over and over again and after each session had ended.  Hence the addition of the ‘Seminar Session’ concept, where the scheduling is now removed from the Seminar Room, in this case one Seminar Room can be easily scheduled for multiple Seminar Sessions.
  • Note that this has been in place for sessions over 600 people since Connect 9 was released, this scheduling requirement is now being enforced with the release of Connect 9.1 for all Seminar Sessions, irrespective of the number of participants.

How can I prepare for the changes?  Do I need to even bother preparing for the changes?
Yep, you need to take notice of this and prepare!  If you do not take the time to schedule your Seminar Sessions then any sessions that are running after your upgrade will take place in the ‘Stand-by Mode’ room, meaning only up to 5 people will be able to attend.
If you do mess up completely and forget to schedule your session or you missed a session, you can schedule your room up to 1 minute prior to the start time of the session *provided* there is not another Seminar Session running at the same time under that license.
You can schedule sessions in preparation for the upgrade by going into the Seminar Room and ensuring that the date and duration have been selected for the room.  This room will now appear on your ‘Seminar Calendar’ in your account under the ‘Seminar Rooms’ tab.  If you already have a session scheduled for this room, or another room using this Seminar License, then you will see an warning that this scheduled session cannot happen at this time.  Detailed instructions for this process can be found here.  Again, this is not a change to your licensing, even without this scheduling you would not have been able to run the two sessions at the same time under the same license.
According to the documentation from Adobe, if you have been scheduling your Seminar Rooms using the Connect Events registration tool, then these settings will be carried over to Connect 9.1 automatically and there is nothing more you need to do.
How will I schedule Seminars after the upgrade to Connect 9.1?
In Connect 9.1 the scheduling of the seminar has been separated from the Seminar Room itself.  This is achieved using ‘Seminar Sessions’.  The detailed process can be seen here, but I have simplified the process below as well:
  1. Create a Seminar Room as usual (note that in Connect 9.1 there is now no option for adding a time and duration to the Seminar Room).  The name of the tab has also changed from ‘Seminar Rooms’ to ‘Seminars’.
  2. Schedule the Seminar Room by either selecting the ‘Schedule a Session’ option when you create the Seminar Room, or move to the ‘Seminar Sessions’ option and then select ‘New Seminar Session’.  You will be able to select the Seminar Room you wish to use from the drop-down menu (note that the number in brackets after the name of the Seminar Room represents the capacity of that room and the license under which it was created).
  3. The required field here is the name of the Seminar Session.  It is good to be diligent with your naming and be clear that you create a ‘Seminar Room’ (e.g. ‘Marketing Seminar Room’) and then you create a ‘Seminar Session’ (e.g. ‘Marketing Seminar Session August 2013’).  The most important field here of course is the scheduling of the Seminar Session.
  4. You have created a Seminar Session and you can see all of the sessions listed under ‘Seminar Sessions’ (note that you might need to edit the date-range to see all of your sessions).
  5. You can also duplicate Seminar Sessions by selecting an existing session and then simply selecting a new name and a new date and duration.
  6. If you want to see a graphical representation of the sessions scheduled for a specific date and maybe across many seminar Licenses, then you can use the ‘Seminar Calendar’ option, this will allow you to look for available times over your Seminar Licenses so that you can schedule sessions efficiently.

How closely can I schedule my Seminar Sessions?  What if I need to extend a Seminar Session?
When you schedule a Seminar Session, Connect will add a 30 minute ‘buffer’ on either side of your scheduled time and duration.  This means in practice that your Seminar Room will be in ‘Stand-by Mode’ (10 person capacity) until 30 minutes before your session is scheduled to begin, at the 30 minute prior mark, the Seminar Room will change to it’s full capacity of (say) 200 participants.
At the end of your session, you would normally close your session and free up the Seminar License.  If you extend the seminar then your Seminar Session will auto-extend up to 1 hour in 30 minute increments *provided* there are no conflicting Seminar Sessions scheduled on this Seminar License.  If there is a conflicting Seminar Session scheduled in the same Seminar License, you will be given a 10 minute warning to close your session before it is automatically ended.
The basic rule around scheduling sessions in order to ensure that Seminar Sessions can accommodate the minimum overrun time and also early-participants is to leave 30 minutes in-between Seminar Sessions.

If you need to schedule your sessions more tightly, then you may need to purchase more Seminar Licenses.
Will this also apply to Adobe Connect Managed Services (ACMS) and On-Premise deployments of Connect?

Yes, connect 9.1 wil have this new functionality in all deployments of the Connect 9.1 version.  Of course ACMS and On-Premise users can choose when to deploy the upgrade so this change to scheduling may not be as urgent in their cases.

Does this affect my Meeting Room licenses (Concurrent Participants or Named Organizers)?
No, this requirement to schedule sessions is only related to the Seminar Licenses and the ‘Seminar Rooms’ tab (‘Seminars’ tab in Connect 9.1), this is not required at all in the ‘Meetings’ tab.