Vyew Review - An Advanced Web Conferencing Tool

Vyew is a free web meeting and online collaboration tool that is completely browser-based, which means that it requires no downloads. It is full of useful features such as the ability to upload and work on documents (which are saved in real-time as in Google Docs), archiving meetings and even sharing mouse cursors. It is an advanced web conferencing tool with a myriad of features which are sure to make your meetings come to life.

Bottom-Line: Vyew is a great looking, features-rich free web conferencing tool. It has VoIP capabilities, so all web meeting attendees can chat using a USB headset or their computers' microphones. It can also connect to your webcam, allowing for video conferencing.

Pros:  Vyew is extremely features-rich, and not only acts as a web conferencing tool, but is also great for video conferencing for up to 6 participants at a time. All of your documents pertaining to a meeting are stored, and can be edited at a later date.

Cons: The one downfall to such a features-rich product is the amount of time it takes to learn how to use all of its features. It is not a tool for those not experienced with web meetings or online collaboration.

Price: Its basic (but full of features) product is free, but there are additional feature packages that can be purchased for $9.95 and $19.95 per month, depending on your needs. This is much cheaper than GoToMeeting or Webex, which start at $49 per month.

Vyew can be used wherever a computer and Internet access are available. Users just have to sign up for an account, and create their meeting rooms. Once a meeting room is created, hosts can begin uploading content into their rooms and invite people to work collaboratively with them.

To start a meeting, there are two options - to meet now, or schedule a meeting. Regardless of the option chosen, Vyew will have a screen where you can add the email addresses of the users you want to invite, enter a customized message and select each attendee’s permission status. With Vyew, users can be viewers and reviewers, or be promoted to collaborators or moderators.

If needed, you can also add a free conference phone number. If that option is chosen, users will only have to pay what their phone provider charges for a phone call. From the meeting rooms, hosts can also start transmitting audio and video, creating a web conference (provided that there are already users collaborating in the meeting room at the time).

Meeting rooms can be stored indefinitely, and every meeting becomes archived, so they can be revisited if necessary. The archives can be changed so that new pages can be added, removed or re-arranged, so even after the meeting you will still have a working document. One of my favorite features in Vyew is that users can also choose to publish their meetings either by sending the relevant URL, or by adding them to a webpage or email. This way, if a participant couldn’t make it to the meeting, they’ll still know what has been discussed.

As Vyew also doubles as a collaboration tool, there are some settings that can be changed to allow users to view and edit documents at any time. Meeting owners can either use what is called SYNC mode which does not allow viewers to navigate pages on their own, or they can use the UN-SYNC mode, which lets viewers navigate documents on their own - this is the more collaborative setting, since users can work on documents at their own pace. When in the UN-SYNC mode, the participant display will show not only the individual users logged in at the time, but which page of the document they are working on.

In SYNC mode, all of the participants are on the same page at all times. So if the meeting host is sharing a document and changes the page, it will change for all meeting participants as well. This is similar to doing a presentation in screen sharing mode, where everyone sees the same thing at the same time.

With Vyew, it is possible to capture your screen during the meeting, and share the result with your participants. All you have to do is choose the ‘screen capture’ tool, then crop the area of the screen that you would like to share and then it will go into your meeting room, to be seen by all your participants. Vyew also allows for regular screen sharing.

There is also a sticky notes comment tool. Comments can be left by users anywhere on the work screen, and when others click on the comment, they can see what has been written. There is also the ability to reply to comments, turning the sticky note into a running list of comments. Users can also leave two minute long voice comments, that can be seen as sticky notes. If there are multiple sticky notes on the screen, Vyew has a really nice tool that organizes all comments into a sidebar, so there is no need to click on each individual comment. It is also possible to search the sticky notes, or filter them, so you can find what you need faster.