InstaColl: Bridging the gap between the desktop and the web

	Quick Start
	Tutorial
	FAQ
	Can you InstaColl?
	Troubleshooting

FAQs

INSTACOLL OVERVIEW

What is InstaColl?

What can I do with InstaColl?

Is InstaColl a web conference/ online meeting product?

Can I use InstaColl in all situations where I am currently using a web conferencing tool?

Is InstaColl only for sharing documents?

So what is InstaColl's business model?

Where do I go for more information?

Is my online collaboration session secure?

GETTING STARTED

What are the system requirements for running InstaColl?

I noticed that you do not support Mac or Linux and require users to have Microsoft® Office.

Why do you require a client download? Don't other RTC products work through just a common browser?

How do I start using InstaColl?

How do I join an online collaboration session?

Can I increase the number of attendees allowed in a session?

USING INSTCOLL

How do I start an InstaColl session?

How do I schedule a session?

How do I start a scheduled session?

What can I do if I forget my password?

INSTACOLL OVERVIEW

What is InstaColl?
InstaColl is a simple new tool that does some pretty useful things!

Contextual Collaboration - the ability to seamlessly collaborate with remote peers from right within mainstream applications - has long been considered the Holy Grail of real-time collaboration. InstaColl attempts to provide "one-click" contextual collaboration from right within your favorite productivity applications - application such as Microsoft Word, Excel and Power Point. Through InstaColl, individuals and organizations can now easily, securely and cost effectively collaborate and share information online. With InstaColl, organizations will increase productivity, decrease costs, expand reach and generate revenue opportunities. Best of all - it is free!

What can I do with InstaColl?
With InstaColl, you can deliver presentations, collaborate on documents and securely share confidential information online from anywhere at any time. You can meet one-to-one with any remote colleague and conduct:

Presentations: Give a slideshow to your online audience and reduce travel costs.
Collaboration: Meet with others online to share, discuss and edit any document. Transfer edit control to other attendees.
Demonstrations: Show prospects how your product works by inviting them to view a demo in real time, whether they are across town or a thousand miles away.

Is InstaColl a web conference/ online meeting product?
Yes and No!

We would like to be believe that the potential usage points for InstaColl far exceed the relatively narrow scope of formal meetings/conferences that other products target. While InstaColl can conceivably used in all business situations that current web conferencing product harken to, InstaColl is also ideally suited for ad-hoc, spur-of-the moment collaboration - for instance, picture yourself going through a convoluted technical document and wishing you could call in a friend to go over the same along with you and make changes where necessary - through InstaColl, you can do precisely that - with a single click of the embedded InstaColl button, you can initiate a session where you can invite your friend to come in and do the needful. Also, unlike traditional web conferencing solutions that rely on screen sharing - capturing screenshots of your desktop/application and then sharing them with users - InstaColl relies on a data-centric approach where you actually work on the actual data within an application - this lets you collaborate in far more powerful ways than just merely displaying your screen to a remote participant.

InstaColl is also far more secure than web conferencing solutions - apart from offering true end-to-end encryption, InstaColl is the only solution that does not require you to share your desktop as a default sharing mode - this cuts down on potential security and confidentiality risks that exist in a screen-sharing mode.

InstaColl is also far easier to use, especially for first-time users of real-time collaboration - rather than requiring you to learn a new collaboration tool, InstaColl simply takes away the static constructs of tools that you are familiar with and adds a collaborative layer around it.

Best of all, unlike expensive web conferencing tools, InstaColl is completely free!

Can I use InstaColl in all situations where I am currently using a web conferencing tool?
While InstaColl can be used in a wide gamut of usage scenarios (some of which, quite frankly, we are not even aware of at this point of time!), InstaColl does not promise to be all things to all people.

This free version of InstaColl offers one-to-one collaboration, so it cannot be used in situations where a great multitude of participants are attending - for instance a web seminar or an investor meeting.

(NB: We are offering a paid corporate version of InstaColl where multiple people can participate in a single session. Write to us at sales@instacoll.com for details)

InstaColl can used for business situations that occur in a one-to-one mode - for instance, a sales call or a customer support situation. Further, the key strength of InstaColl - document collaboration - can be leveraged in a wide range of business situations - such as project team collaboration where document sharing is an important component of the business process. In all these situations, InstaColl increases productivity, decreases costs and generates revenue opportunities.

Is InstaColl only for sharing documents?
InstaColl is ideally suited for sharing documents - specifically Microsoft Office documents including PowerPoint presentations, Word documents and Excel spreadsheets. Most web conferencing users would concur that a vast majority of web conferencing sessions involves sharing one or more documents of these types.

We have focused our initial efforts on providing you with a powerful way to share these documents online. But we realize that there are bound to be situations where you might need to share documents of other formats as also dynamic content such as a software application walkthrough. While we are putting in efforts to support more document formats on a case-by-case basis, in the interim, we recommend that you use our "Share your Screen" module in conjunction with our document sharing models to share software walkthroughs or non-Office documents. Screen-sharing does have utility in specific situations but we strongly feel that it should be used as a last recourse rather than as the first.

So what is InstaColl's business model?
Well, given that we are a business organization and we have invested a lot of time, effort and money into developing InstaColl, our motives for evangelizing RTC are not completely altruistic.

We hope to generate revenue by offering a paid corporate version of InstaColl in two flavors:

A managed hosted model where multiple participants (greater than two) can collaborate together.
A premise-located model for businesses that prefer to internally deploy and manage InstaColl client and server software.

The corporate paid version is endowed with more features for the power users - complete with an integrated voice/video component and powerful robust administration, reporting and centralized management features. For more information on this offering, please write to us as sales@instacoll.com.

Where do I go for more information?
Please check the InstaColl Web site for the most recent information regarding InstaColl. You can also contact our Customer Care department via email at customercare@instacoll.com.

Is my online collaboration session secure?
Your InstaColl session is completely private and secure. InstaColl uses built-in, state-of-the-art security measures to protect access to data and computers. It uses end-to-end industry-leading encryption for all data.

Getting Started

What are the system requirements for running InstaColl?

To organize or attend a session, the following is required:

Required: Internet Explorer 5.0 or later
Required: Windows 2000, NT 4.0, XP or Server 2003
Required: Minimum 28k Internet connection
Required for Microsoft ® Office ® integration: Microsoft ® Office ® 2000 and later.
Recommended: Minimum of Pentium 300 with 64 MB of RAM

Check if your system meets the requirements for InstaColl here.

I noticed that you do not support Mac or Linux and require users to have Microsoft Office.
Rather than cater to the lowest common denominator which would also require us to dilute our product functionality, our approach has been to build out a set of powerful capabilities that can be used by a large subset of PC users - obviously we would like this subset to be as large as possible and given that there are approximately 400 million Microsoft Office users today, we seem to be on the right track!

Also, please bear in mind that not having Microsoft Office does not mean that you cannot use InstaColl - you can still use our screen sharing module to share your desktop with other users a la other web conferencing tools - the only difference is that we recommend using this module as a last recourse as compared to other tools that offer this as the first, and more often than not, only recourse.

That said, we are hoping to include support for other Operating Systems and browsers in our future releases - please check back for news on that aspect.

Why do you require a client download? Don't other RTC products work through just a common browser?
Let us address the myth that "browser-based" applications do not require software downloads or installs. The fact of the matter is that contrary to these claims that there is "no software" to install, these products, do in fact. run their own software - the only difference is that they run it within a browser in the form of an ActiveX or Java applet control. We believe that this approach does not bestow any additional benefits to an end-user. On the other hand, our client application offers end-users a far more sophisticated and polished user interface relative to browser-based applications

InstaColl takes just minutes to set up and requires no training. Simply register for an account online and get your free trial now. After the quick, automatic setup is completed, you can immediately begin hosting unlimited sessions.

How do I start using InstaColl?
InstaColl takes just minutes to set up and requires no training. Simply register for an account online and get your free download now. After the quick, automatic setup is completed, you can immediately begin hosting unlimited collaboration sessions from right within your favorite Microsoft Office application.

How do I join an online collaboration session?
You do not need to have a InstaColl account to join a session organized by an InstaColl user. Getting started is easy. You can join a session by clicking the link in an email invitation you received; or through a link provided in an instant message. You do not need to pre-install any software prior to joining the meeting. You participate as a guest of the meeting organizer, at no cost to you or them.

Can I increase the number of attendees allowed in a session?
The free version of InstaColl allows you to invite one person to join a collaboration session (2 attendees including yourself). You can have any number of simultaneous two-member InstaColl sessions at the same time on your PC. For additional attendees, consider our paid corporate version.

Using InstaColl

How do I start an InstaColl session?
The best and simplest way to start an InstaColl session is by clicking on the embedded InstaColl button within your favorite Microsoft application (Word, Excel or PowerPoint). This allows you to set up a context-sensitive collaboration session where the document that you are working on is available for collaboration inside InstaColl. On clicking on the InstaColl button, an InstaColl session is immediately initiated with the open document loaded into the client in a minimized state. Simultaneously, your default e-mail client is brought up with the collaboration session particulars pre-populated in the e-mail text. You can choose to send out this mail to a friend or alternatively copy the session details from the client console and provide it to a friend through an Instant Messenger. You can minimize the InstaColl client application and continue with any other work while you wait for your friend to join in. As soon as your friend enters the session, you are notified and both of you are automatically shown the document that you had chosen to share.

Alternately, if you would like to initiate a session without loading any document, you can select InstaColl through the Start->Programs->InstaColl menu and click on "InstaColl now" to set up a session and invite a friend to join in. Your meeting will start and the InstaColl client console will appear.

How do I schedule a session?
If you do not wish to initiate a session immediately, you can choose to schedule a session for a later time and day. Click on the InstaColl menu item, log in by entering your account information and clicking the Log In button. Then, select "Schedule a session" and on the ensuing "Schedule Session" dialog box, enter your meeting information and click the Invite button.

You will be notified your meeting has been scheduled.

How do I start a scheduled session?
To start a previously scheduled session, click on the InstaColl menu item and in the InstaColl Login dialog box, enter your account information and click Log In. Select "My Sessions" and then, on the My Scheduled Sessions dialog box, select the session you wish to start and click Start.

What can I do if I forget my password?
Click on the InstaColl menu item and in the InstaColl Login dialog box, click on "Forgot Password?". You will be taken to a web page where you need to enter your user id (your e-mail address). A password reminder will be sent to this address and you can use this to log in to InstaColl.