Macromedia's Breeze Meeting is one of the premier entries in the web conferencing software arena. This article is one in a series that describe the features of the major web conferencing software products that are on the market today.

Let me say at the outset that the functionality and features of Breeze are much too plentiful to be completely described here, and I'll cover only some of the Breeze Meeting features to try and give you a sense of what you can accomplish with the package.

Meeting Rooms

A Breeze "meeting room", your virtual meeting place, is persistent, which is a fancy way of saying that the content of your meeting - notes, presentations, and chat contents are automatically saved for you. Meeting rooms can have a custom layout defined that is also automatically saved. By the way, Mac users, Breeze supports OS X 10.2 and 10.3.

Application and Desktop Sharing and Remote Control

Any web conferencing software worthy of the name includes the ability for the presenter to share applications on his/her desktop with the other participants in the meeting. One very powerful use of this technology is remote software installation. I described in an earlier article in this series the process of receiving an application software upgrade using conferencing software. The latest release of Breeze includes improved desktop sharing that allows shared presentations to be viewed in full-screen mode by the participants. In addition, the presenter (the meeting controller) has the option to synchronize all the participant's screens. The remote control facilities of the product now support full screen mode also. If you're not familiar with it, remote control actually let's one participant control the desktop of another - the first time I watched the mouse pointer on my screen under the control of someone else, it seemed a bit eerie, but I quickly adjusted - its a very powerful facility.

Attendee Management

If you're holding an online meeting of any sort, wouldn't you want to be able to track who is/isn't there and to know if they're connected properly? Breeze provides the ability for the presenter to see who is in the meeting and their connection status. If the purpose of your gathering is training, attendance is taken for you!

Audio Conference Call Control

One way web conferencing software products provide the audio portion of the meeting is through a telephone conference call. Breeze now incorporates the ability to control an external conference call from within the application. You can dial out to meeting participants, control the mute/unmute function (in case someone gets a little too verbal), even eject participants if necessary (the overly verbal guy!). In addition, the controls to record the meeting are part of the interface.

Microsoft Outlook Integration

Breeze is now integrated with Microsoft Outlook. Anyone working in an office environment (and overwhelmed with meetings) will appreciate the convenience of this feature. You can schedule Breeze meetings and invite attendees right in the familiar Outlook environment. Users can even join a Breeze meeting right from their Outlook calendar.

Multi-point Video

The one aspect of a real meeting that web conferencing often doesn't provide is the visual presence of the participants. Breeze now features improved multi-point video - meaning that multiple users can be supported with video input from webcams. I suspect it won't be long before video input becomes a more common aspect of all web conferences.

Whiteboarding, participant polling, participant permissions, and moderated Q&A sessions are some of the other Breeze features that can't be covered here.

The last very interesting bit about Breeze is that it runs under Flash, which is already installed on most computers, which means they can all access Breeze Meetings without installing any additional software.