Overview
Basic Concepts
Session Manager
Session Manager Configuration
Engine information
TANGO Interactive Mail
Application Folders
Users' Panel
Application Sessions
Session and Floor Control
Changing the engine
Exiting the system

  

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 Overview

What is it: TANGO Interactive (TI) is a web collaboratory tool. The system extends the capabilties of web browsers, allowing a fully interactive, multimedia-rich, multi-user collaborative environment in which the users can directly interact with each other. System components and architecture are described here .
T
ANGO Interactive is also a framework for building custom collaborative system. It is possible to build collaborative systems of arbitrary complexity using this  framework. This is a somewhat advanced topic, and we won't be concerned with this aspect of the system in this Guide.

How does it work? Very simple. You start the system (TI Client) by clicking a link in your browser. Then, you select your meeting room (technically, a meeting room is represented by a TI Engine). Once you have entered the room, you can use one of the dozens of collaboratory applications, to work on projects with your partners, to take a class at a virtual university, to create and use a chat room, either private or public, to videoconference, to watch a movie or surf the Internet with friends, or to play a game - such as 3D chess.  Do all this at the same time, in any combination, in as many chat rooms as you like.

No other Web conferencing system  comes even  close to TI capabilities, and  none of them gives  you as many collaborative applications, covering all concievable aspects of human communication over the Internet. The system offers tools covering such divers application domains as executive or technical virtual meetings, real-time corporate training or virtual classroom, customer support, remote consulting, on-line medical counseling, or simply a remote web site demonstrations and guidence, just to mention a few of the numerous possibilities.

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Technical aspects: TANGO Interactive is written in Java. Majority of the system modules is implemented as applets. The applets interact with each other and can control each other behavior. There can be any number of concurrently active collaborative applications, with any number of users in a meeting. By using the browser environment, the system offers unmatched flecibility in collaborative access to all Internet resources.

 TI applets used in meeting space can be downloaded from one or different TI Application Servers. The applets can be loaded when needed and released at any time, ensuring that the system is lean and agile. TANGO Interactive is the first ever and, so far, the only system implementing this very flexible and powerful architecture.

Scripted collaborative applications: Are all TI application modules implemented as Java applets? The answer is: no. TI system is  far more flexible. Applets are neat, but it takes time to download them. Javascript and DHTML  is an alternative way for implementation of interactive client-side web applications. But, can you write collaborative Javascript apps? With TANGO Interactive, the answer is "yes". This patent- protected technology is unique to the TI system and not available anywhere else. Using it, TI can take an arbitrary HTML page and turn it  into a collaborative entity, by providing a mechanism to share virtually all Document Object Model events. This opens a way to new exciting world of collaborative systems which can share arbitrary actions without resorting to a non-scalable, awkward "shared display" technology such as NetMeeting application sharing.

Complex application modules: Since TI framework can share almost every Web object, it also enables implementation of complex application modules that integrate multiple technologies, including 3rd party plugins. A good example of such modules are collaborative 3D VRML worlds, populated with interacting awatars. A 3D cht rooms are just an example of a TI application.

Native code collaborative applications: Further, there are certain types of aplications that cannot be implemented in either Java or in a scripting language. The best example is videoconferencing: Java does not support devices such as mikes and cameras, at least not today, and not without resorting to native code at some level. TI framework provides tools to integrate applications writtent in any "legacy" , pre-Web language such as C or C++. BuenaVista, our audio/video conferencing agent, is a C++ module. Other examples (only available with special arrangements) include a fully immersive,  high-end 3D immersive environment  running on high-end displays or on the CAVE hardware.

TANGO Interactive is an advanced, powerful, and extensible Web collaboratory.  The applications available with this release exemplify each of the technologies we have mentioned above.

Basic Concepts

Meeting room is created by a user loggin in to a TI Meeting Engine. Other users can join the meeting by logging in. Entries to Meeting Rooms are available as links on a Web page created by a TI Service Provider. The users of a Meeting Room have at their disposal a number of various applications they can use to communicate and work together.

Application is a collaborative tool used by the user to communicate with other users. A Chat or a Whiteboard are examples of Tango Interactive application. Tango Interactive system supports applications that are applets, JavaScript/DHTML Web page, or arbitrary modules that run outside of the browser.
There can be any number of applications available for users of a meeting room. What is available for the meeting room users is defined by the Service Provider. Any number of these applications can be active at the same time. An active application creates a
session.

A session is created by a user starting an application module. Other users can join the session, or the user who started it can open the application for the users present in the meeting room. There can be any number of sessions in a Meeting Room. There can also be any number of users in any of the sessions. A user can participate in multiple sessions of the same application. For instance, user A  can open a chat session with users B and C, and join an existing chat session with users C, D, and E.

Participant is a user who takes part in a session. Participant exchanges information with other participants using the application. Each participant can have only one application instance in a given session. However, the user can concurrently participate in many application sessions. This includes multiple concurrent application sessions of the same type.

Master is a participant that has special privileges in the session. Master controls the state of the session, approves new session participants or starts applications for other participants. The user that started session becomes automatically the master of the session . The master status can be transferred to other users back and forth. This process is known as floor control.

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TANGO Interactive Session Manager

Session Manager (SM) is the "centerpiece" of the system. It is an applet which controls all other applets in the system. The main panel of the SM is the "control center" for the entire collaboratory  system. Among other things, it is used to:

  • Display names of available collaboratory applications,
  • Control collaboratory applications: launch and terminate application instances on local and/or remote machines, join and leave existing application sessions,
  • Display system status: system users and active sessions listings,
  • Control certain global characteristics of the system such as session control model..

Session Manager Configuration

Session Manager has a few configuration options. They are controlled via the "Tools/Options" menu. From there you can define behavior of the new and joined application sessions, effectively setting up the session and floor control mode. This "Tools/Applications" menu displays the application configuration table. The table itself is configured externally by your system administrator.

TANGO Interactive Mail

TANGO Interactive supports its own asynchronous mail system. The messages can be send internally and/or forwarded to standard user e-mail accounts. The internal mail is available only as long as your SM is active. You can use mail facility to send private or public messages to other current users. If you use a secure TI engine, the system will use the information contained in the user database to automatically forward all messages to your standard mailbox, and to the community list server.

Access the mail facility by clicking the Tools/Mail menu item.  Also, many application modules can mail application status to the community mailing lists, providing hereby a repository of session records..

Application folders

The "Applications" menu  displays multiple application folders. Folders  are used to group TANGO Interactive  collaboratory applications into logical categories.

Select the application folder name to see available applications, then click on the application icon to launch the application locally.

Application folders can be configured by a system administrator.

Users panel

"Users" panel lists all users of the TANGO Interactive engine. You become a user  by starting one of the many forms of the Session Manager. User panel  provides information about a user's status: available, busy, or absent. Double-click the user name to obtain more information about the user.

Engine information

The main panel of the session manager visualizes the "interaction space" by listing all application sessions in a familiar form of a tree. The tree is rooted in an instance of TI engine. The panel displays engine description. Right-click the name to access engine properties information.

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Application Sessions

The main SM panel that lists all active application sessions.

Click on an existing session to obtain information about current session participants. If you want to join  leave ,  grab the floor (i.e., become master of this session), or close  the entire session, right-click session  entry for a drop-down menu or highlight the session and use "Sessions" menu of the SM. The menu offers a selection of valid operations.

TANGO Interactive  allows for multiple sessions of one application (i.e., you may have multiple chat windows, talking in each of them to a different group of users).

Each session has a master user, listed in the session panel. Master status can be dynamically transferred from one user to another. For some applications, master status defines who controls the application. Many system applications allow multiple users to concurrently operate the application. For such applications, master status only controls the ability of a user to close an application session and/or to control who can join the session..

Session and floor control operations

Launch application
How do I launch an application on my workstation?

There are two ways: (1) you can start applications by clicking an icon in the "QuickStart" bar; (2) you can use "Applications" menu. To use "Applications" menu

  1. Select  the label of an applications folder
  2. Click on the icon of the application you want to start.

Depending on the setup of the session startup option available from the "Tools/Option" menu, the system will react in one of two ways:

  • If you selected "Always new session", a new application session will be started
  • If you deselected "Always new session", and if there is already an application sessions of the same type in the system, you will be offered a choice of either starting a new session or joining (one of) the existing sessions.

Join session
How do I join an existing application session?

  1. Select a session from the sessions list.
  2. Right-click for the drop-down menu or use the "Sessions" menu to select "Join" operation

Remote open
How do I launch an application on another user's machine?

  1. Select a session from the session list
  2. Right-click for the drop-down menu or use the "Sessions" menu to select "Remote open" operation
  3. Select a user from the list that appears on your screen.
  4. Click the "OK" button.

Note: If there are only two users in the TANGO system at the moment, actions 3 and 4 will be taken automatically.

Leave the session
How do I leave the session?

  1. Select a session from the sessions list.
  2. Right-click for the drop-down menu or use the "Sessions" menu to select "Leave" operation

Notes: 1. If you have initiated the session for the application you are leaving, the entire session will be removed (for all users).  If you have become temporary master of the session but are not the original application initiator, master status will be transfered to the last application owner, and only your instance of the application will be closed.
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ANGO Interactive applications do not have EXIT buttons. You should  terminate them from the SM using "Leave" operation. You may force the applications to close by appropraite window manager buttons, and in most cases the SM will catch it, but this is not a recommended method.

Remote close
How do I terminate an application remotely (expell a user from my session)?

  1. Select a session from the sessions list.
  2. Right-click for the drop-down menu or use the "Sessions" menu to select "Remote close" operation
  3. Select a user from the frame that appears on the screen.
  4. Click the "OK" button.

Notes: 1. You can carry out this operation only if you are the application  owner - that  means you were the one to start the session. 
             2. If there are only two users in the session at the moment, actions 3 and 4 will be taken automatically.

Grant master
How do I grant master status to another user?

  1. Select a session from the sessions list.
  2. Right-click for the drop-down menu or use the "Sessions" menu to select "Grant master" operation
  3. Select a user from the list that appears on your screen.
  4. Click the "OK" button.

In TANGO Interactive, floor control is applied on a "per application" basis, i.e., you may be the master of one session and a slave in another.

Note: If there are only two users in the session at the moment, actions 3 and 4 will be taken automatically.

Become master
How do I become the master of a session?

  1. Select a session from the sessions list.
  2. Right-click for the drop-down menu or use the "Sessions" menu to select "Become master" operation.

Changing the engine

Changing the engine is equivalent to going from one meeting room to another.
Double click the name of the current engine in the main SM panel and select "Disconnect". All your current sessions will be terminated and you will be offered a selection of available engines to login to. .

Exit TANGO Interactive

Select "EXIT"  from the "Applications" menu.

Note: All your applications will be closed automatically,  and the engine will be notified. Don't worry about the cleanup!

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