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NG Design Document/Use Cases/Remote Conferencing

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Contents

Introduction

This section is for the simplest of specialized applications: how can people meet with each other virtually, and work together to get things done.

Use Case Name

Invite Participants to Collaborate

Goal User wishes to gather a set of people to a space in order to accomplish a shared goal.
Summary The first problem with organizing work virtually is how to ensure that the necessary people are informed about the collaboration place and time, and are able to indicate their ability to participate or reschedule.
Actors Users, Viewer
Preconditions
  1. Users have installed and registered the viewer, and have access to a shared space
  2. Users and viewer have a means to access contact and calendering information
Triggers Desire to meet in a shared space and collaborate.
Basic path
  1. User selects a list of desired participants, a desired time, and desired virtual location, from a UI
    • UI may be external to the client viewer, such as a web application
  2. Invited Users are informed of their requested attendance through a notification system and UI
    • Most often this will be standard calendaring or scheduling software already in use
    • Invitation contains a link to take the user immediately to the specified location when activated
  3. Invited Users have the option of accepting, declining, ignoring, or rescheduling
  4. Inviting User is informed of attendance or reschedule request, and has the right to cancel or reschedule the collaboration
  5. When in-world, the viewer displays the status of the appointment, and the presence of those who were invited
    • When in-world, in the meeting space, and during the meeting time, all participants are notified of the presence of participating members, including whether they are in the collaborative space or not
Alternative paths
Exceptional paths
Postconditions Users now inhabit a Shared Collaborative Space, which has special properties as a consequence of this invitation procedure.


Use Case Name

Display a Sequence of 2D Visuals

Goal User wishes to display a sequence of 2D visual as a complement to a collaboration.
Summary Displaying shared sequential documents such as presentations, slideshows, and movies, is the first step document sharing. All sequential documents must have "playable" semantics, which is they run through their sequence, stop their sequence, rewind, and skip forward.
Actors Users
Preconditions
  1. Users are in a shared space
Triggers Desire to display a shared presentation
Basic path
  1. User selects a desired world object within which he should embed a 2D visual
  2. User selects a file to be displayed
  3. Visual is embedded along with simple controls for "Start", "Stop", "Next", "Previous"
    • Each visual must assign some kind of intuitive meaning to these common controls, or disable them entirely
Alternative paths
Exceptional paths
Postconditions


Use Case Name

Share a Read-only Document

Goal User wishes to display common document as a complement to a collaboration.
Summary We distinguish between visuals and documents. Visuals make a visual impression, but documents carry precise information that must be rendered in high fidelity. Image compression or incomplete format conversions could cause costly mistakes. We assert that documents are inherently not 3D objects, and must be rendered by a native special purpose application.
Actors Users, Agents, Operating System, Central Storage
Preconditions
  1. Users are in a shared collaborative space
  2. Users have a native document viewer installed on their operating system
Triggers Desire to display a shared read-only document
Basic path
  1. User selects a file to be shared document
  2. Client notifies all participants within the shared space of a shared read-only document
  3. Receiving Users can choose to accept, reject, or ignore the shared document
  4. If accepted, the document is downloaded from the sharing User, and the receiving User's native viewer is used to display the document
Alternative paths
  1. User selects a desired world object within which he should embed the intended document
  2. User selects a file to be shared document
  3. The document is uploaded to central storage to be held for the lifetime of the object in which it is embedded in
  4. Client decorates the selected object in order to indicate its status as holding a document
    • The decoration would most likely be a thumbnail image (as file managers do), also uploaded and stored on the server
  5. When a User selects the object, they are presented with an option to download and view the document
  6. If accepted, the document is downloaded from the central storage, and the receiving User's native viewer is used to display the document
Exceptional paths
Postconditions


Use Case Name

Share a Collaborative Read-Write Document

Goal User wishes to collaborate with others directly on a shared document.
Summary We distinguish between visuals and documents. Visuals make a visual impression, but documents carry precise information that must be rendered in high fidelity. Image compression or incomplete format conversions could cause costly mistakes. We assert that documents are inherently not 3D objects, and must be rendered by a native special purpose application.

Moreover we assert that 3D internet streaming is not suitable for document editing, and therefore must be handled by either a document or Operating System dependent application or protocol.

Actors Users, Agents, Operating System, Central Storage
Preconditions
  1. Users are in a shared collaborative space
  2. Users have a native document sharing application or protocol available on their operating system
Triggers Desire to collaborate on a shared document
Basic path
  1. User selects a file to be shared document
  2. User selects the means of sharing the document
    • for example is it with a generic desktop sharing protocol, like RDP, or with a specialized application
  3. Agent notifies all participants within the shared space of a shared document, and the type of sharing
  4. Receiving Users are notified by their agent if the sharing method is available locally
  5. If the method is availabe, receiving Users can choose to accept, reject, or ignore the shared document
  6. If accepted, the local sharing method is started, and document sharing proceeds as defined by the application or protocol
  7. In all cases a copy of the file can also be downloaded to a local viewer
Alternative paths
Exceptional paths
Postconditions


Use Case Name

Display a Confidential Document

Goal User wishes display a document, but not let any participant download a convenient copy of it.
Summary The only way to make it difficult for someone to make a convenient copy of the document is to have it be a server-side visual. There is always a way to make a copy, but we can try to make it hard to do with acceptable quality.
Actors Users, Agents, Document Converter, Central Storage
Preconditions
  1. Users are in a shared collaborative space
  2. VW has a document converter installed which can generate thumbnail images from specific documents
Triggers Desire to share a confidential document in a limited fashion
Basic path
  1. User selects a desired world object within which he should embed the intended document
  2. User selects a file to be shared document and indicates it is to be confidential
  3. Agent uploads the the document to the document converter, which creates a sequence of 2D visuals, which it attaches to the object
  4. Use case proceeds as in Display a Sequence of 2D visuals
  5. When the user leave the shared collaborative space, the Agent requests the visuals embedded in the object be destroyed
Alternative paths
Exceptional paths
Postconditions
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