A Presentation Management System for Collaborative Meetings Krzysztof Wrona (ZEUS) DESY Hamburg 24 March, 2003 ZEUS Electronic Meeting Management System – ZEMS

24 March, 2003 K. Wrona, A Presentation Management System for Collaborative Meetings 2 Outline Motivation Requirements General concept System structure & security Functionality

24 March, 2003 K. Wrona, A Presentation Management System for Collaborative Meetings 3 Motivation Electronic slides presentation have become a standard Remote participation at meetings are indispensable in HEP community However: Too much time and people resources spent for meeting organization Sharing documents between all meeting participants is not simple and often creates unexpected problems

24 March, 2003 K. Wrona, A Presentation Management System for Collaborative Meetings 4 Requirements Integrated system for meetings management Deals with different organization aspects Implements procedure for slides collecting Allows for slides presentation Should be easy-to-use, reliable and secure Support for different kind of meetings Collaboration meetings Working group meeting Meetings based on video-conference system Seminars

24 March, 2003 K. Wrona, A Presentation Management System for Collaborative Meetings 5 Requirements – details 1.Presentation a)Excellent slides reproduction for hundreds of listeners b)Support for people at other labs who cannot attend the meeting in person c)Access to remote resources in auditorium 2.Meeting organization a)Simple, comfortable interface for agenda generation b)Sub-tasks delegation (e.g. sessions chairmen) 3.Slides submission a)Easy, fast method for slides submission b)Last-minute changes, additional materials for discussion c)Access control list 4.Interaction between presentations a)Summary speakers collect material from previous presentations

24 March, 2003 K. Wrona, A Presentation Management System for Collaborative Meetings 6 ZEMS System Integrated system based on web technology Widely available Well known components – easy-to-operate Long experience running web server Access to external resources via web

24 March, 2003 K. Wrona, A Presentation Management System for Collaborative Meetings 7 Components Client 1 Client 2 Client 3 Client N disk repository APACHE Document Root

24 March, 2003 K. Wrona, A Presentation Management System for Collaborative Meetings 8 System Structure Manager Speaker Meeting participant Different functionalities and privileges Manager – write access to disk repository and database Speaker – write access to selected directories in repository and only one table in database Meeting participant – read only access Small number of managers Sizeable group of speakers, authorized to upload a file for a particular presentation Huge number of passive meeting participants

24 March, 2003 K. Wrona, A Presentation Management System for Collaborative Meetings 9 Security File upload potentially a “risky” business Secure connection using SSL module Web server authentication mechanism does not give us enough flexibility We maintain access control list in database Access to the system is possible only via well defined web interface System runs on separate web service Appropriate file-system permissions Repository outside “web directory tree” – no direct access to files via URL PHP session management – all requests sent from web pages prepared by possible attacker are refused Minimum privileges to database, only local access All variables sent to web server need special treatment (post method, quotation for database queries, no global variables)

24 March, 2003 K. Wrona, A Presentation Management System for Collaborative Meetings 10 Hierarchy Meeting classes (groups) Meeting Session Presentation File containing slides Weekly Collaboration meeting Jan/2002 Collaboration Meeting May/2002 Collaboration Meeting Sep/2002 Collaboration Meeting Parallel session Parallel session Detector status Plenary session Introduction MC production Analysis tools Computing Slides.ppt image.gif video

24 March, 2003 K. Wrona, A Presentation Management System for Collaborative Meetings 11 Delegation of privileges

24 March, 2003 K. Wrona, A Presentation Management System for Collaborative Meetings 12 ZEMS administrator creates “group”, assigns manager Group manager creates meeting Group manager may grant privileges to other manager (meeting or session chairman) Manager view

24 March, 2003 K. Wrona, A Presentation Management System for Collaborative Meetings 13 Agenda Generation Manager prepares an agenda using comfortable web forms

24 March, 2003 K. Wrona, A Presentation Management System for Collaborative Meetings 14 Speaker view Speaker opens a browser Authenticates to the system Uploads slides Slides may be re-ordered or hidden Only speaker is involved, can be done at any time before the talk Immediately after uploading the slides are available for other participants Last minute updates possible

24 March, 2003 K. Wrona, A Presentation Management System for Collaborative Meetings 15 Slide show In auditorium, speaker shows slides Documents accessible through orderly placed web links The same hardware is used for all presentations No need to reconnect notebooks Connection to internet Possibility of using external resources

24 March, 2003 K. Wrona, A Presentation Management System for Collaborative Meetings 16 Remote Participation People on remote sites can view slides in exactly the same way Coexistence with online video Displaying slides on desktop PC Displaying meeting agenda RealPlayer slides viewer web browser

24 March, 2003 K. Wrona, A Presentation Management System for Collaborative Meetings 17 Summary Speaker Summary speaker may use all slides from a session to prepare a talk Slides available for all participants May be downloaded Selected results or plots may be copied to summary presentation

24 March, 2003 K. Wrona, A Presentation Management System for Collaborative Meetings 18 Experience 4 collaboration meetings ( 3 in Hamburg + 1 in London) Access via wide area network for London meeting In total 30 meetings, 90 sessions, ~500 presentations Typically slides upload procedure takes 1-2 minutes includes navigation to a proper talk, speaker authentication and slides upload System highly popular in ZEUS Very positive response from meeting participants (speakers, listeners and people on remote sites) Usage of the system is straight forward Summary speakers could finish and upload slides even during the ongoing session (via WLAN) Further improvements in preparation: Automated registration for a meeting Templates for agenda generation – useful for periodic meetings

24 March, 2003 K. Wrona, A Presentation Management System for Collaborative Meetings 19 Summary Integrated, web based meeting management system has been developed Straight-forward usage Significant improvement of document collecting procedure Considerable improvement of remote participation Elaborate security management, well defined privileges for each meeting participant Reliability – no single failure over more than one year