Footprints

Footprints provides a number of settings that allow you to customize the way it presents information to your meeting attendees. The following list of settings applies to the Enterprise Licensed version of Footprints. None of the Meeting Setup features described below are available in the Small Business / Single User Licensed Version

Some features apply globally to all meetings while others can be altered on a meeting by meeting basis.

All features are available during the Free Trial Evaluation period.

Meeting Setup

Company Name: (global)

After you first install Footprints, you should enter your Company or Organization Name in this area. The bottom panel of Footprints will report the total savings that have been calculated for your organization and this will be personalized with the value you enter here.

Please Note: The Company Name setting is global and will affect all meetings using Footprints for your account. You cannot change the value on a per meeting basis.

Theme Colour: (meeting)

You can change the appearance of Footprints to reflect your corporate or organizational colors or the colors that you would like to use to match the mood of your meetings. Simply select the color from the picker tool or enter a standard 6 character RGB Hex value in the field provided.

Colours can be set individually for each meeting and the value will be remembered. When you pay for an Enterprise License, you can specify the default colour that you would like all new instances of Footprints to use. Individual users can override this colour for their meetings if they prefer.

Currency: (meeting)

You can display the value of your financial savings in your choice of 10 different currencies depending upon your meeting audience. While all calculations are stored in US Dollars, you can display the savings to a European audience in Euros and a Japanese audience in Yen. Switch between currencies at your option using this setting.

Unit of Measure: (meeting)

You can display your savings for Carbon Emissions in Lbs of CO2 or Kgs of CO2 and the distances in Miles or Kilometers according to your personal preferences and the audience you will be meeting with. Switch between Metric and Imperial units at your option using this setting.

Logo URL: (meeting)

Enterprise users of Footprints have the option to customize the logo displayed on the pod instead of the Refined Data logo (which we think is nice but you might not want to have included in your presentations). Simply provide the full path to any JPG, PNG or SWF file located anywhere on the Internet and that image will be used to replace the Refined Data logo on the Footprints pod.

The logo should be sized appropriately (75×75 pixels is a good size but you can experiment with larger images if you prefer) and we will add the “http://” prefix if you leave it out.

You can specify a different logo for each meeting where you include Footprints and we’ll remember your preferences. This lets you include a host photo or a client logo on the pod for maximum personalization if you use Connect Pro for demonstrations.

When purchasing your Enterprise License for Footprints you can specify a default corporate logo location that will be used for all new meetings unless the host chooses to override this. (We still think our logo is nice if you don’t want to provide us with a default setting)

Travel Costs: (global)

We provide Footprints users the ability to customize the costs used in calculating the financial savings from the use of Connect Pro virtual meetings. You can specify your own global rates which will be used for Car, Short-Haul, Medium Haul and Long-Haul travel.

You must specify the rates in US Dollars per Mile and the results will be converted in to whatever currency and unit of measure you specify in your meeting preferences.

We assume an appropriate mode of transportation based on the following formula:

Under 100 Miles - one way -> Automobile

100 - 300 Miles - one way -> Short Haul Air

300 - 600 Miles - one way -> Medium Haul Air

Greater than 600 Miles - one way -> Long Haul Air

Save and Resume Button

Once you have finished altering your meeting setting preferences, simply press the Save and Resume button in the lower right hand corner of the pod to apply your changes and return to the meeting. Your attendees will briefly see a message that informs them ”Calculating Footprints” and the display should then automatically refresh.

Start New Meeting Button

Whenever you create a new meeting space in Adobe Connect Pro, a new meeting is assumed to have begun and a new set of calculations will be made. However, some Connect Pro users use the same Meeting Room for multiple events and need a way to inform the system that they want to start a new set of Carbon Emission Savings calculations.

To create a new meeting session and erase the old calculations from the pod, simply click the “Start New Meeting” button in the lower left corner of the Setup Screen.

Please Note: If you are hosting multiple sessions with the same group of individuals over several hours or days, do not press this button and no new carbon or financial savings will be calculated for users who were in the earlier sessions. After all, if you flew to a conference on the other side of the continent, you wouldn’t fly back home when you broke for lunch. In the same way, we only want to calculate the impact of additional travel if the participants would have had to make the journey in real life.

Make Me The Host Button

By default, Footprints assumes that the first Host in a meeting would be located where an assumed physical event would have taken place. All attendees are then assumed to have driven or flown to this location when performing the calculations.

In some cases, the first Host in the meeting space is simply the moderator who is setting up the room and the assumed location should really be where the primary speaker will be calling in from. In this situation, any Host can go to the Meeting Setup screen and click the “Make Me The Host” button and all attendee distances will be calculated from this new location.

Note: Use of this option will automatically result in creation of a new implied meeting, erasing all previous calculations for this meeting session. For this reason, it is usually suggested that the assignment of a new Host be done before attendees arrive in your meetings to avoid counting their travel distances twice (one for the original host location and then again for the second Host location).

Calculate Footprint Button (main meeting view)

Occasionally, you may find that the list of meeting attendees or the calculated values do not appear to be correct. This can be due to problems with the Adobe synchronization services or slow network response. In this event, you can force Footprints to recalculate the Footprint for each attendee in the meeting by clicking the “Calculate Footprint” button. A message will be displayed on the pod to all users to inform them that the pod is recalculating the Footprints of the attendees. While it is unlikely that you will need to use this feature, it is provided as a manual “reset” button to be used in special cases where there seems to be a problem.

Troubleshooting

Footprints should work without problem in most situations. If you experience problems in a meeting, and the Calculate Footprint button fails to resolve them, you can try some other simple remedies:

Try switching to another layout and then returning to the Footprints layout.

Try closing the Footprints pod and re-opening it.

If none of the above solutions seems to be working, please take a screen shot if possible and send it along with full documentation (including your Adobe Connect Pro Account ID, domain name, Meeting URL, date and time along with a full disrciption of the problem) to Support@RefinedData.com and we’ll do our best to provide a resolution or a workaround.

Customization

If you have custom needs that are not addressed by Footprints in its present format or you would like to discuss other Connect Pro applications with us, we’d love to hear from you. We build custom applications from the simple to the sophisticated for a wide range of clients around the globe. Please talk to us, we love a challenge!