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	Convoq ASAP

Presence Awareness

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Convoq ASAP is certainly one of the real-time collaboration tools that best leverages the concept of presence and the powerful interaction and communication mechanisms that can be spanned from it.

ASAP integrates a full presence awareness engine very similar to what is typically employed by the major instant messaging solutions. A list of contacts, buddies, friends or work mates populates a vertical floating display panel, and people in this list, are displayed with different colors and icons accoding to their "presence" status: "busy", "not available", "out for luch", etc. While some of this can be triggered automatically (e.g.: idle, offline, etc.) others require a manual intervention from the user.

The advantages of having direct visual control of your contacts and of who is available and who is not, are multiple:

a) It is easy to get to the right people faster.

b) It is easier to get immediate answers and feedback from partners.

c) It facilitates impromptu, informal, just-in-time requests that in many cases would not have been carried out (due to the time required to get a response).

d) It keeps closely-knit groups and working teams in closer contact, allowing easy group communications and rapid exchanges without the lengthy formal process of writing an email.

e) It allows real-time monitoring and alerting of critical activities with the ability to signal customers, partners or other team members in an instant.

ASAP licensed users have some unique advanced features at their disposal which truly enhance their ability to be an active part of a project team or of a community. For example, any ASAP user can elect another user to be a "Stand-In" for him/her.

This means that the person elected to be a "Stand-In" can replace/substitute the other one at meetings, briefings and live sessions where the other party cannot attend for any number of reasons.

"...a Stand-In is one or more designated ASAP contacts who may "stand in" for you when your presence is set to Away, Offline, or Do Not Disturb. If you wear multiple hats, you can also designate Stand-Ins by group; for example, you could send Mary as your Stand-In to Engineering meetings and Bob to Marketing meetings."

"When contacts try to reach you, they are notified that an appropriate Stand-In is available. If you have designated multiple Stand-Ins, ASAP will display an appropriate list so the meeting initiator can select the most appropriate one.
Another great feature that significantly enhances presence and the ability to reach relevant people in a group without knowing them directly, is the effective use of Lifelines."

Two other unique presence awareness statuses extend ASAP abilities to effectively manage presence and real-time communications: LifeLines and VIPs.

"A Lifeline is a role-based contact, rather than a person-based one. Lifelines provide a way for you to reach resources and experts you need (but who may be unknown to you by name) in real time. For example, a Lifeline called Product Management could resolve to someone in that department. You may or may not know anyone from that department, but including that Lifeline in a meeting ensures that someone from that department will be represented."

For more detailed information about LifeLines, their properties and how to set them up in ASAP please see this page.

VIPs. "There are many cases where you may want to grant certain individuals (your manager, spouse, or a premier customer) greater accessibility. With ASAP you can designate these individuals as VIPs. When you do so, the VIPs will see you as Available, while all other contacts will see you as Busy, Do Not Disturb, Away, or Offline."

For more information about the VIP status please see this page.
Further to the above ASAP standard status choices, Available, Busy, Do Not Disturb, Away, etc. not only provide a visual indication of your status to all of your online contacts but also determine a relative communication status which prevents for example other users from contacting you directly when you are in "Do Not Disturb" or "Away" modes.

Cons:

List of contacts cannot be filtered to show only who is online. All contacts are displayed at all times.

Instant messages cannot be dispatched directly from ASAP to visible contacts. Only invitations, emails and files can be sent to them. Though not directly related to presence this issue limits the effectiveness of having a direct visual feedback of contacts presence but not being able to instant message them as the needs arises.

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Posted on April 01, 2004 at 07:09 AM

Updated on April 01, 2004 at 08:30 AM

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