METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR ELIMINATING TIME LOST IN INITIAL STAGES OF A WEB CONFERENCE DUE TO PARTICIPANTS NOT BEING IN-PLACE ON-TIME

摘要

A system for eliminating the time lost in initial stages of a Web conference due to participants not being in-place on-time is disclosed. The system enables automatic steps to be taken at the server to pull conference participants into a conference based on their acceptance of an invitation to the conference. A server system provides indications of confirmed conference participants to agent software on the client systems, and activates client side agents when the a conference is about to start. The Web conference server communicates relevant conference information to each client side agent. The agent launches the user's client side browser and automatically performs any other preliminary steps that are required to join the participant to the conference. The participant user may be presented with a user interface that enables them to either accept or reject the automatic login to the conference. If the user rejects the automatic login, then indication of this rejection is passed to the server. Other information passed from the client system to the server may include an indication that no response to the accept/reject prompt was received from the user, an indication that automatic login to the conference was attempted but failed for some specified reason, indication that the participant was automatically logged in to the conference but is not at their desk, that the participant's client system is not connected to the network, or that the participant is currently active in another application or activity on their client system.