Create and manage seminars

Use Adobe Connect Seminars to create a special type of meeting. Seminars bring attendees to a meeting room on a specific day between set start and end times. The seminar exists only for that time. (By contrast, the meeting room in which the seminar occurs exists before, during, and after the seminar).

Unlike a meeting, which normally has a small number of participants and can recur, a seminar can have up to 1500 participants, is often a one-time or infrequent event, and involves little audience participation. At least one seminar presenter or host must be in the room in order for others to enter, even if the seminar is public. The default seminar room looks different from the default meeting room. Also, seminars can be created only in a Seminars Rooms, whereas meetings can be created either in a shared folder or a user folder.

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Large and small seminars

A seminar that allows more than 600 participants is considered a Large Seminar. A seminar accommodating fewer than 600 participants is considered a Small Seminar. Only one large seminar can be scheduled during a given time period. Whereas, you can schedule multiple events using a single regular seminar.

The license you purchase is either for small seminars, run as regular meetings, or for large seminar, run as large meetings. A seminar session is created as large or small according to your license and is not based on the number of attendees. 

Seminar Room and Seminar Session

In Adobe Connect, a seminar license is available in the tab Seminars > Shared Seminars. Each license that you purchase, appears as a folder in the Shared Seminars tab. To schedule a seminar, you create an instance of a Shared Seminar basing it on a seminar room. Such different instances of Shared Seminars are called Seminar Sessions. Each session is a stand-alone webinar that participants attend.

If you avail Named Webinar license, a Users Seminars tab and My Seminars tab is available that allows you to manage your webinars. 

Various webinars that you conduct, are individual instances of the available Shared Seminars. These instances are called Seminar Sessions and are available in the tab Seminars > Seminar Sessions.

Pre-seminar tasks

Careful pre-seminar planning helps a seminar run smoothly and streamlines follow‑up activities.

Determine the expected number of participants for your seminars

If your organization purchased Seminars, it obtained a specific number of seminar licenses. The number of seminar attendees cannot exceed the number of concurrent users allowed for your license. Your Seminars administrator has information about how many licenses your organization purchased and how many concurrent seminars you can conduct at a time. If you think you need more licenses, let the administrator know early. The Seminar Calendar lists the schedule for all the seminar licenses that you possess. You can view your time slot to determine if a seminar license is available for the slot.

For accounts with seminar license for large meetings, make one of the following selections for the Expected Number of Participants:

• Regular if attendees are <=600

• Large if attendees are >600

Access the Seminar library

Seminar files and folders are stored in the Seminar library. Users who have the correct permissions can manage and organize these files and folders. You reach the Seminar library through the Seminars tab.

Establish permissions

Attendance permissions define attendee roles in a seminar, such as participant, presenter, and host. You assign these permissions when you create a seminar. The Seminar Administrators can also modify them during the seminar and after the seminar is over by editing the participant list.

Seminar library permissions determine who can manage the library folders. Of the six built‑in groups, only Administrators have Manage permissions for the Shared Seminar folder. Authors, Training Managers, Meeting Hosts, Seminar Administrators, Webinar Managers, and Event Managers are assigned Denied permissions by default. The administrator can override those default permissions and allow others access to the Shared Seminar folder. (There are no Publish or View permission types as there are for the Content library.) To manage folders other than the Shared Seminar folder, you must have Manage permissions for that folder in the Seminar library.

Register and approve attendees

Depending on the type and purpose of a given seminar, the Seminar Administrator may want to have the guests register. If so, the host must have Adobe Connect Events as part of the Adobe Connect Central application; registration for any meeting, training, presentation, or seminar can only be done through the Event Management tab. If the host has this tab, they must first create the seminar from the Seminars tab using the Seminar wizard. Then, they create an event and select the seminar they have created as the event.

Create a seminar

After obtaining correct permissions, create seminars using the Seminar wizard.

Start the Seminar wizard

Create or browse to a Shared Seminar in the Seminar library where you place your seminar (you must have permission to access the folder). When you determine a location, click the New Seminar Session button to open the wizard.

Enter seminar information

On the first page of the Seminar wizard, enter background details about the seminar, such as a name and summary, and select a template to use. (Only the seminar name and language are required; all other fields are optional.) You can edit this information after the seminar is created. You schedule various sessions using a single seminar room and reuse a seminar URL.

Schedule seminar sessions

A Shared Seminar is a placeholder for all your future sessions. After creating a New Seminar Room, schedule the various instances of your seminar as Seminar Sessions. Your seminar URL remains the same as the base seminar room does not change. However, the schedule and the duration of a seminar can change with each session. Your seminar license determines the maximum number of participants.

Select seminar participants

If your seminar is limited to invited guests only, the next step is to select the seminar participants. For a seminar limited to registered guests and accepted users, you can select users and groups to be participants or presenters in your seminar. These users are able to log in to the seminar directly. Uninvited users who have the URL to the seminar meeting room can attempt to log in as guests. In this case, as a host, you can grant admission to guests on an individual basis.

Send invitations

The final step is to send participants email invitations containing the date, time, duration, and location of the seminar. Send invitations as you create the seminar, or create and send the invitations later.

Schedule a Seminar

You schedule a seminar session using a seminar room as a base. The seminar URL, coming from seminar room, remains the same, while duration and schedule changes with each seminar session.

Your specific seminar sessions are created in advance before each session starts. The base URLs of the respective seminar rooms are used as the URLs of the sessions. The recording and the reports for each session are available when you open a completed session in Seminar Sessions tab.

You can create an ad-hoc seminar session from inside a seminar room, by clicking New Instant Session, in the notifier pop-up in the upper-right corner.

Resolve seminar scheduling conflicts

When creating a seminar, if its schedule overlaps with an existing seminar, Adobe Connect does not allow you to create the seminar. To avoid the conflict, it suggests checking the seminar calendar and resolving the conflict. To check the seminar calendar:

1. Go to Seminars > Seminar Calendar. All your seminar licenses have a unique entry in the left sidebar.

2. Choose a specific date. The view refreshes to show you seminar instances on the selected date in the calendar view.

3. Click a specific session. An Event Details pop-up dialog displays the details of the session.

Alternatively, to see the list of all seminar sessions scheduled over a longer period, follow these steps:

1. Go to Seminars > Seminar Sessions.

2. Adjust the From and To dates. All the Seminar Sessions scheduled across all your Shared Seminars using all your licenses are listed.

3. Check the Start Time and Duration of all the instances to locate the conflict.

Extending seminars beyond the scheduled time

A Seminar Session that continues beyond the scheduled time is automatically extended twice, for 30 minutes each time. A Seminar Session is extended only if there is no overlap with another pre-scheduled session. If a pre-scheduled session conflicts with the extension of the currently running seminar, the current seminar ends in 10 minutes. The Hosts receive an in-meeting notification that the current session cannot be extended and it ends in 10 minutes.

If a seminar runs beyond the scheduled duration, the seminar is automatically extended twice for 30 minutes each time. Thereafter, the Host is presented with an in-meeting notification to manually extend the seminar for 30 minutes at a time. The ongoing seminar session is extended if there are no conflicts with a pre-scheduled seminar session. The Seminar Administrator is notified at each extension.

Standby mode and scheduling ad-hoc Seminar Session

When you open a Seminar Room outside a scheduled Seminar Session, the room opens in a standby mode. The standby mode allows Hosts to prepare the room for the seminars, to do room testing, and to become more familiar with the Adobe Connect seminar environment. Only ten participants are allowed in a seminar room, in the order: Session creator, Hosts in alphabetical order, Presenters in alphabetical order.

The Seminar Administrator receives a pop-up notification displaying the number of users rejected entry in the currently open seminar session due to the quota limit. After the seminar room owner creates an instant session, the participants can join by reopening the seminar session.

Follow these steps to create an ad-hoc Seminar Session.

Send seminar invitations

You can send email invitations when creating a seminar session. After a seminar begins, you can contact invitees by sending an email from the Seminar Session Information tab or from within the meeting room. For more information about latter, see “Contact invitees from a meeting” in Invite attendees and grant or deny access. For former, follow these steps:

View seminar information

To view or modify an existing seminar, you must have both of the following permission types:

You must have Manage permissions for the seminar folder or file, because when you change a seminar that you created, you are effectively changing the file or folder in the Seminar library.

You must be the host for the seminar, because you are also changing the parameters of the seminar itself.

View a seminar profile

View a seminar participants list

If you have Manage permissions for a seminar, you can view a list of all invited participants for each seminar room.

View a list of content uploaded from a seminar

If you have Manage permissions for a seminar folder, you can view a list of all content that has been uploaded to the server from a seminar room within that folder.

View a seminar recordings list

You can view a list of the recorded seminars.

View recordings of specific seminar sessions

You create specific Seminar Sessions using a seminar room as a base. The recordings for all seminar rooms are available as described above. The recordings of specific Seminar Sessions are also accessible separately.

View seminar folder license information

You can view information about how many seminar licenses your organization purchased. This can be helpful when planning the number of people to invite to a seminar.

Edit seminars

If you are an administrator or have Manage permissions for a seminar folder, you can add participants, remove them, and change participant permission roles (host, presenter or participant). Administrators are able to access the seminar rooms and access the related content or recordings and reports, as well as, move or delete any content or delete a seminar room itself. 

However, administrators cannot schedule sessions or create seminar rooms in user folders. This behavior is similar to how Account Administrators are able to access user meeting folders and access meeting and content but cannot create meetings.

Move seminars

You can move seminars across seminar licenses. While you can move multiple seminar rooms in one go, you cannot move:

• Folders
• A seminar room that has an ongoing seminar session
• A seminar room that has a scheduled large seminar session starting in less than 45 minutes (large seminar session buffer)
• A seminar room that has a scheduled seminar session starting in less than 45 min (large seminar session buffer) into a large seminar license.

If there is a conflict in the existing session of the room and the license it is being moved, Adobe Connect provides a warning with a list of the conflicting sessions. Moving such a seminar deletes the conflicting sessions of the source seminar license.  

Edit seminar information

Add or remove seminar participants

You can add or remove seminar participants at any time.

Change a seminar participant’s role

Seminar participants can be assigned the following roles: presenter, participant, or host.

View data about seminars

The Seminar Dashboard provides a graphical representation of statistical data about your seminars. Click the Seminar Dashboard link under the tab bar, at the top of the Seminar’s window.

The data, which reflects all the seminars you have created, appears in three-bar graphs; click any of the bar graphs to view the Summary Report for this seminar.

Determined by the number of sessions.

Determined by the number of participants.

Determined by the number of views (the number of times each archived seminar has been viewed).

You can click any individual seminar in any of the three-bar graphs to view more detailed information about the seminar.

Seminar reports

Use the Reports feature of Adobe Connect Central to create reports that summarize seminar information from different perspectives. Reports are created from the Reports link on the Seminar Information page.

Reports for Seminar Rooms can be accessed by accessing a room and clicking Reports. The room reports contain Aggregate User Data about sessions and invitees. Reports for Seminar Rooms are available as an overall Summary and reports By Attendees, By Sessions, and By Questions.

You create specific seminar sessions using seminar rooms as base. The reports for specific sessions are also available separately. Access a session in Seminar Sessions tab of Seminars and click Reports. It shows reports about the attendees and poll-related questions.

Join a seminar from Adobe Connect Central

If you are scheduled to attend a seminar, the seminar name appears in the My Meetings list on the Home tab in the Adobe Connect Central window. In addition, if you have Outlook and have accepted the invitation to the seminar, the seminar appears on your Outlook Calendar. (Seminars you create are listed under the Seminars tab.)

You can determine if the seminar you are joining is already in progress by checking the date and time shown for the seminar. If the date is in the past, the seminar appears on your meeting list under expired meetings, but you can still enter the room to view content.