Here at Bamboo Solutions, we have staff all around the world (Reston, VA, USA; Amsterdam; Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam; and several points in between). To help keep the communication lines open, a couple of years back, we established VOIP company-wide using  Microsoft Office Communicator initially, later transitioning to Microsoft Lync. Besides the great features of VOIP (one awesome new feature introduced with Lync is that you can set priority to voice, so if the network falters, your phone call doesn’t die with it — something which occasionally happens when talking to people in Vietnam from the US) is the ability to share webinar-based desktops through conference calls.  This is a great tool for training staff on various topics; I use the feature to train our technical staff how a new Bamboo product works. While I am presenting the meeting, I can additionally record it so those who couldn’t attend, or those who want a refresher, can play the video anytime. In the past we would upload the video to a local network file share, which works great for people in the local office, but remember that we have worldwide staff and this is just not feasible for them.

Which brings me to the recent major releases of Bamboo’s File Share Library and Video Library. By taking the best of both worlds and integrating them, users can now upload and view large videos through SharePoint! The following article will walk you through the process from creating a meeting, recording the meeting, and publishing the video into SharePoint.

How to create a recording with Lync

If you’re not completely familiar with Microsoft Lync, Lync actually comes with three main components on the client side:

• Lync client, which integrates IM, phone, and on-the-fly conferencing, all in one.
• Live Meeting, an extension of the Lync client which provides a formalized meeting interface.
• Online Meeting plug-in for Outlook, which provides a quick way to create a new Live Meeting instance.

To start, I’m going to create a new Online Meeting using Outlook, in this case Outlook 2010.

When you create a new meeting, you will see an icon in the Ribbon called Online Meeting:

Upon clicking this option, text will be injected into the bottom of your meeting details:

When the meeting participants receive the meeting invite and open the meeting details, they’ll click the Join online meeting link to join. As the meeting organizer, you’ll open the meeting minutes and click the Join online meeting within the familiar Lync window which will appear:

To share contents with your participants (such as a particular program, a whiteboard, or even your desktop) select Share:

When you’re ready, click the arrow on the far right and select Start Recording:

You will notice the recording process in your meeting window:

When the meeting has concluded, click either End Call or the blue Stop button to end the recording.  Upon doing so, you will see the Stop Recording window. Here you will define how the meeting recording will be saved. Make sure you select the option Also create a version that you can publish to others:

If you forgot to select this button, or you want to manage the recordings, take note of the Recording Manager in your system tray:

In the recording manager, there are two tabs, Lync Recordings and Windows Media Recordings:

After you have created your recording, go to the location to which you saved the recording. Here you will notice a folder of the meeting title and the published WMV.  The folder contains the individual components of the meeting, such as the audio, the video, and any shared files. The WMV file is a mashup of the components stored in the folder.

Import Video into SharePoint

1. If you have not already done so, go to the Bamboo Storefront and add the trial for File Share Library and Video Library to your cart and proceed to checkout to receive the installation packages.
2. For installation, view the Online Documentation for File Share Library and Video Library. NOTE: After your SharePoint Administrator installs these products, have them follow these steps to allow large file uploads per Web Application:
   1. Login to Central Administration and select Manage web applications under Application Management
      
   2. Select the Web Application you want to allow users to use to upload large files to the network file share (passing the SharePoint file limits; again only File Share Library is affected, not standard SharePoint Document Libraries) and then select Manage Features:
      
   3. Locate the feature Bamboo File Share Library Large Files Feature and click Activate
      
3. After successfully installing both products, the next step is to create a File Share Library.  To create and configure the library, view the following Online Documentation. Remember: How you configure File Share Library determines the behavior of the soon-to-be connected Video Library as well.
4. The next step is to configure the Video Library. Refer to the Online Documentation for how to create the Video Library, and then refer to the section Storing Media in a Bamboo File Share Library to connect the two libraries.
5. You have now successfully configured File Share Library and Video Library for use. Refer to this final section of the Online Documentation on Using the Video Library.

As an added bonus, you can add various rating options to your videos, and not just one rating but multiple ratings (for example rate on quality of subject matter, video quality, accuracy, and so on) with Bamboo’s Rating Column (sold separately).

 So why not give our products a try, it won’t hurt a bit since all 3 products are available with a fully-functional, 30-day trial. That is of course the Bamboo Way!