Building Portals, Intranets, and Corporate Web Sites Using Microsoft Servers

Online Conferencing

Next to having a place to share information and documents, conference capabilities are the most essential collaboration capabilities. Microsoft has provided several products to fulfill these requirements. The first was NetMeeting. Later, Exchange incorporated conferencing technology and a separate effort produced Windows Messenger. Much of this technology was incorporated into Windows XP. Most recently, Microsoft purchased Placeware, a hosted conferencing service, to round out the offering.

Without online conferencing, users must choose between asynchronous communication via email and telephone conversations to communicate remotely. Both these are effective media, but online conferencing can augment both. For instance, email ...