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Hi, I'm Andy Trembley. Welcome to Spartan Webex Tips episode 4, Dialing for Dollars
WebEx supports different ways to participate in the audio portion of a meeting or lecture.
Understanding how these options work when you schedule a meeting can help you better
prepare for your audio conference and maybe save the university a few dollars.
Traditional teleconferencing uses phones, dialed in to a "conference bridge" that connects
all the callers together. This is a simple, reliable way to run an audio conference, and
WebEx provides this service. On the up-side, everybody knows how to use a phone. On the
down-side, SJSU pays WebEx for the time that people are called in to the meeting, and the
callers may pay for their own minutes. We have a pool of pre-paid teleconference minutes,
and it's pretty big, but it's not unlimited.
Computer audio conferencing uses microphones, headsets and speakers connected to your computer.
WebEx calls this VOIP, which is an acronym for Voice Over IP. VOIP can mean a lot of
different things, but when WebEx says it, they really mean computer audio conferencing.
This might be a bit trickier to set up on your computer the first time, but VOIP time
doesn't cost the university or you anything. Your desktop support technicians can help
you get set up for computer audio conferencing.
So how do you control what options you're giving to your participants? There are two
"meeting types" in WebEx, and by picking your meeting type you can control what kind of
audio conference is available to your participants. The meeting type can be set when you schedule
a WebEx meeting.
MC Pro+VOIP meetings offer only computer audio conferencing. This meeting type is available
to both employees and students with WebEx host accounts. This is the only meeting type
available to student accounts.
WebEx Pro 1000 meetings provide both teleconferencing and computer audio conferencing. Because using
teleconferencing can cost SJSU money, this meeting type is available to faculty and staff
only.
You can, and probably should, set your default meeting type in your WebEx preferences. Just
visit the Preferences page, go to the Meeting panel, and edit your default meeting settings.
That way you can be sure you automatically get the meeting type you prefer most often.
I hope this makes your WebEx audio conferencing options clearer. Thank you, and please join
me again for another Spartan WebEx tip.