broadcaster on MGC

[signfaith]

I have new MGC installation in IP network. My boss asked me, is there a way for him to choose or let certain participant forced to be seen by other participants? It's very simple task in ViewStation embedded MCU. Is it possible to do the same thing on MGC. FYI, My MGC has IVR/DTMF capability.

[signfaith]

Forgot to tell, it's from keypad of the endpoint.

[Samoht]

You are asking for the feature chairman control. Unfortunatly the MGC supports this feature only on ISDN conferences. Since it sounds you are running all systems on IP, this feature is not available. However, there are other solutions to do the job. The easiest would be WebCommander Director. You can control the conference using a web browser. The location that should be seen by everyone can be activated just by drag and drop the participant into the main window. You might ask your local representative if you can have an eval of the software if this would be an alternative.

Tom

[signfaith]

Thanks for your response Tom.

In the manural I find that the MGC allow control of q&a session by dtmf code. I have never tried it. According to your experience, how this q&a session going, does it help to solve my problem? (by letting participant asking question, it will force the questioner to be a broadcaster, won't it?"

[tom9933]

Just curious but have you tried creating a conference using lecture mode? We use this CP layout for classes because much like presentation mode on the endpoints it automatically switches between cp and full screen when a site becomes the broadcaster. Basically the person speaking sees the other sites in a cp layout and all other sites see the broadcaster full screen. Our instructors really like this mode because it allows them to see all the far sites while they are presenting.

[signfaith]

The point why this problem becomes an issue in the first place is, sometime the audio from several sites is not controllable. When the session going, if the broadcaster is set to free-running mode, the video switching wildly between sites. It was not nice conference experience, since the video switching abruptly to other site which is not the current speaker. That's why the chairperson or moderator of the session need to force the current speaker as fix broadcaster.

Do you have any idea how to solve this without asking the participant to mute their audio when not speaking?

[tom9933]

Ok then it defiantly sounds like you need to create a moderated conference. I believe you can do this either from the endpoint with the DTMF tones or with the user version of web commander. We typically use lecture mode for classes where the discussion is a bit less active. BTW we also use push to talk mics at all of the sites we build for this very reason. We used to have a lot of problems with people moving papers and such.

[cmacgfmt]

I believe it is possible using Polycom's Click & View package. I know it is possible to change screen layouts from the remote using DTMF codes. I believe it is also possible to put into lecture mode as well.