Managing Large and Structured Meetings with Lync 2010

and

Managing Large and Structured Meetings with Lync 2013

Both papers cover a lot more than I can cover in these blog posts about running large meetings. We have run many successful Large Meetings in the Lync and Skype product group in Microsoft and these white papers draw off the experience gained.

As always, feedback is welcome!

(note – hyperlinks above are valid as of today, 8^th May 2014. If they don't work, please use BING to search for the white papers).

The recommended way to share video clips in Lync 2013 is to use PowerPoint 2013 presentations. PowerPoint 2013 has the ability to embed video clips into a presentation and share that presentation through Lync 2013. Note that we would only recommend this solution for short (<5 minute) video clips to ensure that network resources are not overloaded. Also, see the warnings at the end of this article.

It is pretty simple to embed a video clip into PowerPoint, but there are some additional steps that need to be followed to ensure the video will play when shared in Lync 2013 meetings. Just because the video plays from PowerPoint on the desktop will not guarantee that the video will play successfully in Lync. This is because Lync 2013 uses the PowerPoint Web Application to display the PowerPoint presentation and embedded video. So, follow these steps to ensure your video will play in your Lync 2013 meeting:

In the PowerPoint 2013 presentation, select Insert from the Ribbon and then choose Video and select Video on My PC. Note that Online Video may not play correctly when shared in Lync 2013:

Select your video file. MP4 or WMV work best, although other types such as MOV may work:

The Video file will appear in your current PowerPoint slide:

Choose the PLAYBACK option in the Ribbon. Note especially the Play Full Screen and Start: options:

I recommend selecting Play Full Screen to ensure the video fills the screen. I also recommend Start: be set to On Click. The other option is Automatically. If Automatically is selected, as soon as the slide is displayed, the video starts playing. In a normal onscreen PowerPoint presentation, this is an advantage, but when showing videos online via Lync 2013, other factors come into play. When the video is played in a Lync 2013 meeting, the video is buffered onto each PC where the user has joined the meeting via Lync 2013. This buffering starts when the PowerPoint slide containing the video is displayed. On PCs with poor network connectivity, it can take a few seconds for enough of the video to be buffered before it can begin to play. If the video starts to play Automatically as soon as the slide is displayed, PCs on slow connections may not have received enough of the video file to be able to start playing the video. This may cause confusion and frustration for the attendee.

Best practice is for the presenter to introduce the video when the slide containing the video is displayed, thus giving enough time for all PCs to buffer the video to allow the video to start playing when the presenter clicks the Play button.

Once you have embedded the video into your PowerPoint presentation, as I mentioned earlier, there are a few more steps you need to complete before the video will play in Lync 2013 meetings. First, save the presentation in its original form. Then in PowerPoint 2013, select the File menu:

Depending on the type of video you embedded into the presentation, you will see either one or two new options in the Info screen:

If the video is not in MP4 or WMV format, you will see the Optimize Compatibility option. Click this to ensure the video will be compatible for online presentation:

Once processing has finished, select Compress Media:

The 3 options change the quality of the video but also reduce the file size and thus the video performance when shared in a Lync 2013 meeting. I normally use Internet Quality. This gives an acceptable image quality but also reduces the file size enough to ensure that most slow connections can buffer the file sufficiently to display it correctly in the meeting. Once the video is compressed, PowerPoint will inform you how much the video size has been reduced:

Now it's time to save the presentation again. Give it a different name, maybe appending "- Lync Optimized" so you can identify the two presentations later.

Upload the presentation into Lync as usual. The video file is now embedded into the PowerPoint file so you don't need to upload videos separately.

During the presentation, when you come to the slide containing the video, pause and introduce the video. This will give enough time for the video file to be buffered to remote attendees (as explained earlier):

After you have introduced the video, click the PLAY button to start the video:

Note that Lync 2013 will mute your microphone. The audio from the video is played on each PC, including the presenter's PC, so the presenter's microphone is muted to ensure everyone does not get echo from the video audio and the presenter's microphone. Once the video has finished playing, don't forget to unmute the presenter's microphone!

Warnings

Playing video via PowerPoint in Lync 2013 has been used very successfully in many meetings. However, there are situations where there may be problems. If some meeting attendees have joined the meeting via PCs with very slow network connections, there could be times where the video will either start but not complete playing before the presenter moves on in the presentation, or where the video may not start at all. As described earlier in this article, the video file is buffered to the attendee's PC. If the network connection speed is too low, it may not be possible to buffer enough of the video for the video to play. Also, if the buffering fails mid-way through the video, the video may pause and then restart. The presenter has no way to know whether all attendees have successfully watched the complete video, so when the presenter advances to the next slide, any videos still playing on attendee PCs will be stopped.

If you suspect that some users will be attending via slow links, test the video with some sample users before the main presentation (preferably a few hours or the day before the meeting). If the video fails, you can try to reduce the video quality using Compress Media, but note that all attendees will see the same quality of video.

If you have many users on poor network connections, it might be worth providing offline copies of the video or avoiding the use of video altogether in some meetings.

However, with careful planning and choosing the right options in PowerPoint 2013 it is normally possible to achieve very satisfactory results playing video clips in Lync 2013 meetings.

When you open Move Maker you are presented with a blank project:

To add your Lync meeting recording, either click the "Click here to browse for videos and photos" link in the right pane, or click the "Add videos and photos" button in the ribbon.

You can browse to the folder that contains your recording. It will be in your My Videos/Lync Recordings folder:

Here I'm selecting the recording of the Skype team All Hands meeting (yes it was a real meeting!). Click the recording you want and click Open.

Now you can use all the features of Movie Maker to change your recording. But this time I just want to "top and tail" it – cut the start and end off to make the recording start just as the speaker starts and end when the meeting finished:

I've set the cursor to the point I want the recording to start and then clicked the "Set start point" option in the Editing chunk of the ribbon. The data before my cursor position will be removed from the recording. Note that this is non-destructive – the original file will remain the same even after all my editing. I can then do the same for the "Set end point. If you make a mistake, click the Undo button and nothing is lost.

When your recording is as you want it, you need to save it. There are two save options in Movie Maker. Save Project and Save Movie. Save Project is in the File Menu:

Use "Save Project" to save details of all the changes you have made in your editing session. Later you can open the Project and continue editing. The Project file can only be opened in Movie Maker.

"Save Movie" produces the final Movie file that you can send to other people or share on YouTube etc.

To save the movie, go to the Home ribbon and click the down arrow just below the "Save movie" option, or choose File Save Movie:

There are many options you can try, or you can choose Create custom setting:

All the options are beyond the scope of this short article, but if you are interested, drop me a comment and I may add more details in a future article. If you want to experiment with settings to see how they affect the final video, one good tip is to base settings on existing files. To find out what settings are used in various video files, use Windows Explorer to look at the properties of the original recording or other video file. Right click on the file in Windows Explorer and choose the Properties option:

Now click the Details tab and you will see the Video and Audio details:

Note for example that Lync recordings are recorded at 10 frames per second. Normal video is recorded at 25 frames per second (or 29 frames per second in the US), so it would be worth setting the Frame Rate (Frames Per Second) setting in the Move Maker Custom Settings dialog to 10 frames per second. Anything more just increases the size of the file but does not increase quality.

If you want to see what settings a particular Save Movie option in Movie Maker is using, hover your mouse pointer over the option and a pop-up panel will show the settings:

For this example, I've chosen my preferred movie type (I chose "For Computer"). Now I get the choice of saving the file as an MPEG4 file or a Windows Media Video file (WMV). MP4 is rapidly becoming the file type of choice, but many people still use WMV, so the choice is yours.

The new recording file will be saved in the folder you chose. Once it has been saved, which may take some time (be patient – Movie Maker is doing a lot of work here!), you can check the size and quality of the file.

If you are experimenting to find the best file size vs quality I would recommend taking a recording and making a test version of the file trimmed to about 5 minutes. Then you can save the file in different formats to see which one you like the best. Saving a 5 minute file will be much quicker than saving the complete recording. Once you hit on your preferred format, you can then save the full recorded meeting project in that format.

For this example, we will use Microsoft Outlook. In Microsoft Outlook, select the Calendar view and either create a New Meeting, or use the New Lync Meeting button in the ribbon.

If you have chosen New Meeting, rather than New Lync Meeting, click the Lync Meeting button in the ribbon to promote the standard Outlook meeting to a Lync Meeting.

Note that the "Join by Phone" phone numbers are already populated from your Lync account details. Also, your Conference ID is populated. The Join Lync Meeting hyperlink will not work until you send the meeting invitation to the attendees.

When you schedule a simple 1:1 or 1: a few collaboration meeting, all you need it do is to fill in the attendees on the To line, fill in the Subject and maybe a few details in the text area and send the invitation. (Note, don't add text between the dotted lines above and below the Lync Meeting info. If you do it may not be possible to update the meeting invitation later if you need to).

If you are scheduling a "managed" meeting such as a Team Meeting, Training Session or All-Hands/Town Hall meeting, you need to do some more things before you send the invitation. Click the Meeting Options button in the ribbon:

This will bring up a new dialog:

We need to discuss the concept of Meeting Space (the two radio buttons at the top of the dialog under "Where do you want to meet online").

Everyone in Lync gets their own Dedicated Meeting Space. It's the place where all your "normal" meetings are held. If you just schedule a Lync Meeting and send it, the meeting will be held in your personal Dedicated Meeting Space. Think of it as your own office. If you schedule another meeting and don't change the defaults, the next meeting will also be held in the same Dedicated Meeting Space (your office). You don't get any options to control here – it's just your own space. This can cause problems. Imagine you are holding two Lync Meetings, one after another. The first meeting is with a design team discussing a new secret product. The second meeting is with a member of the press. Because you just accepted the Lync Meeting defaults, both meetings are held in your Dedicated Meeting Space, but the member of the press can join your meeting before the secret design meeting has finished because the Join Meeting link in the meeting invitations are the same. Probably not ideal!

This is why you have the top option – A New Meeting Space. Note that this is not the default. You have to choose it as I did in the picture above. When you choose the New Meeting Space you get a new private meeting (like choosing to hold the meeting in a Conference Room instead of your normal office) and this space is dedicated to this one meeting. The Join Meeting link and the Conference ID in the Outlook Meeting Invitation will be changed to a unique one before the invitation is sent to reflect that this meeting in unique. Note also that once you choose the New Meeting Space, all the other options in the dialog are available for you to change for this one meeting.

The Lobby can be useful for smaller meetings if you want to control when people enter your meeting, but note that when the meeting starts you have to allow each person individually who is waiting in the lobby to enter the meeting. This can take some time for a larger meeting, so use this feature with caution!

The next option "Who's a presenter" is very important for managed meetings. In Microsoft Lync, Presenters have special powers mere Attendees do not. Amongst other things, Presenters can mute people, they can look ahead in PowerPoint presentations, they can select which WebCam to view, they can remove people from meetings etc etc. In your Dedicated Meeting Space, everyone from your organization is a Presenter. For managed meetings you will want to limit who is a Presenter. One great reason is the little check box "Mute all attendees". How many meetings have you been in where someone has left their mic open and you can hear is them typing, talking on the phone etc? With this option, all attendees joining the meeting will have their microphones' muted so they can't interrupt the meeting. You can do the same with the next check box, "Block attendees' video". In large meetings this can be very useful.

So for your managed meeting, choose "People I choose" in the "Who's a presenter" drop-down list.

When you first choose the option, only you, the meeting organizer is a presenter. But by selecting attendees in the left list (use CTRL Click to select more than one, or Shift Click to select a block) and then clicking Add, you can make your selected and trusted co-workers Presenters. Note in this meeting we have two special account – Video Tech and Audio Tech. These two accounts are used to control the Video and Audio for a Large Meeting. More about this in a future post.

When you have selected your presenters, click OK and you are ready to send the invitation. But wait. Have you thought of everyone you will need to be a Presenter in your meeting? Make sure you include them as presenters. Using Microsoft Lync 2013, in meetings with over 75 participants it is not possible to promote someone to be a presenter during the meeting (I'll explain why when we discuss the Large Meeting roster). So MAKE SURE you have selected all your presenters before the meeting. And note that every time you want to add a presenter, you have to go back into the Meeting options and move the attendee to be a presenter using the dialog above. You then have to send a Meeting Update to all meeting invitees. Again, planning is good here!

I said that the default is for all Lync meetings to be held in your Dedicated Meeting Space, rather than having an individual meeting space for each meeting. If you schedule a lot of confidential meetings and want each meeting to be unique, you can use the button "Remember my settings" at the bottom of the Lync Meeting Options dialog to set each meeting to be unique.

That's it for scheduling the meeting. Have a great meeting!

Spontaneous

Spontaneous meetings are probably what most Lync users are used to. Spontaneous meetings can include two or more people at their computers equipped with Lync Certified WebCams and Audio devices and may also include remote attendees using their mobile devices (phones, tablets etc) and even people in a conference room using a conferencing device such as the PolyCom CX5000 "Roundtable".

Team Meetings

Team meetings will normally be held in one or more conference rooms. The power of Microsoft Lync allows people to attend the meetings from their remote offices or home and even to attend the meetings using their mobile devices. This type meeting might be more structured with defined agendas and presenters and so may need more planning.

1 To Many Training

Here, most people will attend the session remotely via Lync. The presenter will either be in an office or training center or will be in a room with a few in-person attendees. Most attendees will join via Microsoft Lync and view the presentation and ask questions during the Q&A time. Microsoft Lync is very capable of running a session such as this, but some planning is needed to ensure a successful session.

All-Hands/Town Hall

All-Hands/Town Hall meetings are the most complex type of meeting. There will be at least one large meeting room with many in-person attendees and one or more live presenters. There may also be other large meeting rooms and many remote attendees all connected via Microsoft Lync. Presenters are not limited to presenting in the main location, but using the power of Microsoft Lync presenters can speak and share content from any location. This type of meeting requires the most planning.

To put it another way…

To put it another way, meetings can be grouped into Spontaneous meetings (unplanned, one to one, multiparty sharing content etc) or Planned and Scheduled (Team Meetings, Training and All-Hands/Town Hall). Spontaneous meetings require very little planning, but there are still some best practices that I will share. Planned and Scheduled meetings require more forethought and planning and I will cover our in-house experiences and best practices gained over a number of years running these meetings.

Please read on and expect to see many more posts over the next few weeks/months.

Mike Jorden

I am a Technical Program Manager for Microsoft Lync and Skype. I focus on technical issues around Microsoft Lync and specialize in setting up and managing Large and Structured meetings in Lync.

Expect to see lots of snippets relating to all things Microsoft Lync and Skype. At the moment this blog is under construction, so watch this RSS Feed!!