And now we are back to the all new how to-s in ISL Groop. Now that you are through with all preparations for a web-based seminar, done with invitations for the attending audience, and are waiting for the first person to drop in, a sense of sheer excitement must be pumping adrenaline to your bloodstream. No doubt you are a natural improviser, and your webinar would turn out brilliant even without any proper training, it is still highly advisable to quickly run through the following tips.

Features to conquer for a smooth webinar.
1. Podium. To go on the podium, move your mouse over it and click the green icon.
2. Audio, video. While you wait for the audience to fill the web-room, you can take a few minutes to test and set your audio and video device to skip the unnecessary awkward surprises during the webinar. You will find the settings in the upper left corner under the Home tab. When you open the video device settings, you can also choose to show your personal image instead of the video stream, but considering you will be the one glittering on the podium I warmly suggest you go for the video.

Now that your audio and video work without a single hitch, you can turn them on (See the Favourites tab in the upper right corner, or the icons beside your name in the Participants list).
3. Slides. As I have already mentioned in my previous post, by far the easiest way to prepare slides is to import the content from the PowerPoint. Today, we are going to look at how you can spice up your webinar with application and screen sharing, inserting a clipboard image and adding a screen clipping. Let us first check the option »Live screen«. You are welcome to watch a short video I have prepared to give you a brief insight of how to use desktop sharing in ISL Groop.

To insert an image into a slide, you need to open the image you want to insert, select it and copy it. Then, go back to ISL Groop, open the Share tab, and click »Clipboard image«.

Screen clipping works a bit differently. As the name speaks for itself, you can insert a clip of your screen onto a slide. To do that, just click »Screen clipping« and select a part of your screen you want to share with your public.

4. Navigation between slides. To navigate between slides move the mouse over the slide you want to switch to, and click the upper green button. Pretty much intuitively, the button below with a small red »X« will delete a slide.

Perhaps the most valuable information for the presenter is how to look at another slide in a back-stage mode. Under the Share tab there are two options; »Work alone« and »Follow presentation«. The latter always synchronizes the presentation slide with your slide – if you move to another slide, the audience also moves along. While if you turn on the »Work alone« mode and change the slide, it changes merely locally plus the slide’s border colours red. This way you know you are not synchronized with your audience’s presentation. To assure you are, just switch back to the »Follow presentation« mode.

5. Annotation tools. Another handy thing during the presentation are the annotation tools located left to the slide. There, you will find a pen, a marker, an arrow, and a text tool, each of adjustable size and colour. You can also undo or redo a certain change, delete one object (the button on top) or delete all objects altogether (button in the bottom).

6. Interaction with the audience. An ISL Groop webinar with default settings preselects a guest role for every attendee except you (host). Although we have covered this in our previous post, it bears repeating who the guest is. A guest has limited rights: s/he may join in the webinar, listen to the presenter, see the presentation on slides, and ask a question via chat. In other words, the guest’s function is to sit back and enjoy the webinar. These limitations notwithstanding, the host can give certain rights to each individual guest during the webinar: unmute their audio, initiate video stream, pass them the podium and promote them to the presenter role. Thus, an attendee joined in as a guest can also actively participate in the debate. Let us see how.

Pass the podium to a guest by right-clicking on his/her name and selecting the second icon from the left. Afterwards, unmute the guest, and enable his/her video (icons right of the name). To take over the podium from the guest after his/her speech, move your mouse over the podium and click the green icon.

7. Export slides after the webinar. Just click »Export« at the Share tab, select slides, and continue to export them to the PowerPoint. A follow-up email with an attached presentation of your amazing webinar will be that extra something to give your audience the push they need.

I hope you found the posts on ISL Groop’s webinar educative. Anyway, if you bump into more questions, please go ahead and put them in the comments section below.