Mitel’s AWC combines the benefits of a feature-rich audio conferencing solution with easy-to-use, intuitive web conferencing facilities enabling users to enhance a conference call or meeting through the use of shared documents, presentations, chat and video. AWC provides a great return on investment (ROI) for businesses of all sizes with a typical payback in a matter of months. Compared to conducting face-to-face meetings, AWC helps your bottom line by cutting travel expenses, such as transportation and accommodations, and by eliminating employee downtime while in transit.

Unlike many hosted conferencing offerings, AWC has no limitations to the number of conferencing hosts, no special event connection costs and no expensive add-ons. The benefits

of choosing AWC over traditional outsourced conferencing services include improved control and management, ease of use and it is virtually free to run and maintain. Typically hosted conferencing service providers charge either high contract fees or, for “pay as you use” customers, per user minute charges for both audio and web conferencing on top of the regular connectivity charges. AWC has no per user minute costs for web conferencing and you don’t pay for internal users that are accessing the audio conferencing bridge. External participants pay standard call charges to dial into the audio conferencing bridge or AWC can be configured to dial out to the external participants. This is especially useful for international callers as AWC can be configured to call over the IP telephony network using least cost routing.

Audio Conferencing Features and Benefits

Scheduling Conference

Several types of conferences can be scheduled

• One-time calls – have a defined start and end time and take place only once. A unique access code is assigned to each one-time call that is scheduled.
• Recurring calls – have a defined start and end time on a recurring basis (e.g. standing calls that occur every Tuesday between 10 am and 11 am for the next five weeks)
• Reservationless calls – can happen any time within a 6-month period, without the need to schedule the call (e.g. for calls with irregular or flexible schedules, including ad-hoc calls). One access code is used for each reservationless conference that is scheduled

Participants can call in to join a call or the AWC server has the capability to call a participant rather than having the participant call into the server to join a call. This is accomplished using a conference link URL. The conferencing server then makes an outbound call to the participant.

Ad-hoc Conference Calling

Users can swiftly create conference calls on the fly, without scheduling a conference call. Once the user has logged into the AWC user interface , a small window is provided for immediate dial out. The user enters the number where he / she can be reached as well as the number of the person being called. AWC calls the user first; when the user answers, it calls the other party. At that point, the call in progress screen is presented and additional parties can be added to the call at any point.

Spoken Name / Roll Call

AWC allows a caller’s name to be recorded and then played when they join the call. Additionally, if the spoken name option has been selected, the leader can request playback of all recorded names as a roll call.

Controlling a Call in Progress

The AWC UI allows effortless control of a call in progress. Each leader and participant is shown in his or her own row with the associated telephone number and three control buttons. The control buttons enable the call leader to mute, hold and drop participants individually or collectively using the similarly labeled buttons at the top of the page.

During a conference call, the call leader has numerous options:

• The leader can conveniently add a new participant by entering information into the name / number field; copy or paste a name / number into the field from other applications (email, text file etc.); or drag and drop a name / number into the field
• Quickly add participants to a call via touchtone (DTMF) dial-out without distracting the other parties
• Individually control each participant; mute, hold or drop the call
• Click the “mute all” button to enable lecture mode
• The conference host or participant can also use DMTF codes to invoke in-call features. This enables a host who does not have access to a web browser to manage and control the conference call.

Participants are also able to mute and un-mute their line as required using DTMF dialing codes.

Administrative Assistant (Delegate)

Users can designate a delegate to schedule, change, delete and even lead calls for them. The delegate can:

• View a list of all calls for a given user, whether those calls were scheduled by the user or by the delegate
• Add, change and delete calls for any of the users the delegate supports
• Email call information to the user (subject, date, time, telephone numbers and access codes)
• Email call invitations to intended participants on behalf of the user
• Join and lead the conference in the host’s absence or on behalf of the host

Web Conferencing Features and Benefits

By utilizing the additional web conferencing functionality, users can extend the reach and impact of their ideas to virtually anybody, anywhere in the world. From their desktops, hosts can conduct efficient, interactive online meetings with employees, partners, customers and prospects by utilizing tools such as desktop and application sharing, polling and side-bar chat, Internet co-browsing and multi-point videoconferencing. Additional features include full record and playback capabilities, file transfer and document management.

Web Conferencing

Desktop Sharing

Spontaneously share desktop content including presentations, software applications, graphics and data files of any kind. The host decides how much of his / her desktop to show to the participants. The host can also enable remote control and whiteboard tools for select participants to increase interaction and collaboration.

Application Sharing

The application sharing feature provides additional security by allowing the host to designate which applications the participants can see and interact with. When remote control and whiteboard tools are enabled for participants, they can only manipulate the shared application and nothing else that may be running in the background on the host’s machine.

Internet Co-browse

When the meeting host initiates a co-browse session, a new instance of a web browser launches on the host’s and all participants’ computers. This feature allows the host to navigate the attendee(s) to any public URL. Because the browser is local to the participant(s), pages can be bookmarked and local authentication is used for secure pages.

Multi-point Videoconferencing

Broadcast live video to all participants using a standard PC webcam. The host also has the ability to selectively enable webcams for meeting participants when a group videoconference is desired. The host controls the resolution size of the videoconferencing window. The frame rate and video quality are controlled by each individual who is broadcasting video during the conference. Regardless of which frame rate is used, participants will only see video at the rate they are able to receive it based on available bandwidth.

Polling

Solicit feedback from your audience with targeted polling questions, or maintain participant focus by posing periodic polling questions throughout the course of the conference. Share combined or individual results with all participants, or keep all results hidden from view. At any time during polling, the meeting host can save the results to a CSV file for a future review. If polling is toggled on and off during a conference, it is possible to append new answers to the same CSV file when saving the results.

Transfer Host Control

This feature allows the host to transfer meeting control for the web conference to any participant. The participant becomes a temporary host and gains control of the web conferencing features only. The temporary host can transfer host control to another participant as well. The original meeting host can; regain complete control of the web conference at any time. The transfer host feature is used when a participant needs to control other features in addition to desktop broadcasting.

Enable Remote Control

Remote control is available during desktop sharing and application sharing. Initially, when desktop sharing or application sharing is launched, content is shared visually with participants. By default, participants cannot manipulate the information displayed on the screen. In order for a participant to access or manipulate the information on screen, it is necessary to enable remote control for that participant. Whoever is currently displaying their desktop is also able to control which participants can gain remote access to the desktop content.

Hand Raising

When presenting, it is important to know whether attendees have a question or would like to make a comment. Hand raising allows the host to view which participants have a question or comment without interrupting the flow of the meeting.

Acknowledgements / Quick Polls

In addition to the “raise your hand” icon, the participant console includes a green tick and a red cross. These are used to provide the meeting host with a quick yes or no response without invoking the polling feature. This allows the meeting host to gauge the pace of the meeting and whether participants are following along.

File Broadcast

File broadcast allows the meeting host to transfer files to all or select participants. This is especially helpful when files are modified during an interactive collaboration session.

Keyboard Chat

Keyboard chat enables public and private interaction with all or select meeting participants via keyboard text chat. The convenient “save” icon allows anyone to archive a transcript of the keyboard chat to a text file.

Security

Dynamic CAST 128-bit encryption, SSL support, private meetings, password protection, meeting lockout and other security measures are built into AWC to protect your organization’s assets.

View or Broadcast Remote Desktop

The host can request to view a remote desktop and choose whether to broadcast it to the other participants. Rather than prompting the remote participant with a question, the desktop sharing tool simply opens up in “paused mode” when the host makes the request.

The participant acknowledges the request by pressing the “play” button to broadcast desktop content, or denies the request by refusing to broadcast desktop content. When broadcasting desktop content, the remote participant can also enable whiteboard tools and remote control to select participants. The remote participant does not retain control over the other meeting features when broadcasting their desktop content this way.

Attendee List

The purpose of the attendee list is two-fold:

- Gauging performance

– Viewing participant screen resolution

– Enabling / disabling controls for all or just select participants

– Monitoring who joins or drops out of a session

– Enhanced meeting security (lock door, enable encryption)

– Targeted interaction with other participants (e.g., private keyboard chat)

– Enabling select controls for other participants (e.g., remote control when host chooses to broadcast a remote participant’s desktop)

• Host tool for:
• Participant tool for:

Document Management

Document Management allows users to place files in public or private areas for future use. When accessed by the host during a web conference, all participants are able to view and download files from the shared public area.

AWC is a cost-effective, feature-rich combined audio and web conferencing application that is available as a single application on Mitel Applications Suite (MAS) or as part of a multi-applications bundle for MAS.

Capacity and Performance

The following capacity and performance figures are based on single application MAS server deployment. If running multiple applications, the capacity and performance of AWC are affected depending on the availability of server resources with the other applications running. Typically when AWC is deployed as part of a MAS multi-application bundle, then the maximum number of audio and web conferencing licenses is limited to 25 ports of each.

Audio Conferencing

The following capacities are supported for audio conferencing:

• Total number of concurrent audio conference users: 200
• Maximum number of users per audio conference: 50

A maximum of 40 concurrent users with G.729 encoding can connect to all audio conference calls in progress. However, additional users with G.711 encoding can connect and join an audio conference up to the supported limits.

Web Conferencing

Higher bandwidth requirements are necessary to support the web conferencing (collaboration) features.

The server rating is based upon the hardware and is set at a maximum before the performance is noticeably impacted. The Mitel AWC server does not prevent more than the supported limits, it only tracks what is licensed. The following capacities are supported for web conferencing:

• Total number of concurrent web conference users: 200
• Maximum number of users per web conference: 200

Language Support

• American and UK English
• Voice prompts only for French (France and Canada) and Dutch
• Customizable voice prompts for all other languages