Glowpoint Announces Microsoft Exchange Integration Video Conferencing Web Portal

Glowpoint, a provider of managed services for telepresence and video conferencing, announced the release of ScheduleSync, a feature that synchronizes customer desktop calendaring and scheduling software with Glowpoint's customer Web portal. ScheduleSync integrates with Microsoft Exchange and allows SMB (small and midsize business) customers to schedule and manage telepresence and video conferences from their desktop computers.

ScheduleSync is a downloadable application that resides, and is configured, on an organization's Microsoft Exchange server and is designed to automatically enable end-users to analyze free/busy status for prospective telepresence and video conference meetings and attendees, schedule such meetings, make changes to reservations and have video sessions launch automatically and directly from their personal computers.

The company said ScheduleSync is currently available for select Glowpoint customers, with a full product rollout scheduled for the first quarter of 2010 to all Glowpoint customers, including members of their Telepresence interExchange Network (TEN). In addition, ScheduleSync for Sametime Lotus Notes and for other business calendar applications will be available in the coming months.

The company's director of product management Howard Reingold said traditionally, meeting coordinators would use our customer web portal or contact Glowpoint's Video Network Operations Center (VNOC) reservationists via telephone. "Now, customers can see the availability of meeting rooms, video systems, and participants, and schedule directly from their Microsoft Outlook desktop calendaring function," he said. "The process is seamless and is a significant benefit to customers, and it allows organizations to use their existing business calendaring application to easily integrate our VNOC managed service into their user community."

Product features include the ability for users to schedule meetings and select participants, participant resources, conference rooms and telepresence and video rooms as listed resources in their Microsoft Outlook calendars and standard notifications that are automatically sent within the native Microsoft Exchange platform to all participants. The solution also includes user-friendly, built-in free/busy viewing to schedule and provide all of the required details for the meeting to automatically launch the video call at the requested meeting time and is compatible with major telepresence and video conferencing environments such as Polycom, Tandberg, and Cisco.

"A key component to driving the adoption of video is making it easy to use," said Glowpoint president and co-CEO Joe Laezza. "ScheduleSync, as a feature of the Glowpoint customer web portal, is consistent with our -in the cloud' managed service approach, that makes the management of telepresence and video effortless for the end user and is designed to help drive global adoption of video as a key component in the unified communications mix."