We have discussed many of the nuances of Sametime 8.5.2 servers. Let us now turn our attention to Sametime clients. Sametime 8.5.2 offers not only server architecture flexibility but many client options as well. Companies and organizations can pick and choose how they deploy and provide Sametime services for their users.

Let us start with the Sametime Connect Client. This is the primary Sametime client. If you are already a user of Sametime software, then you may be most familiar with this client. In Sametime 8.5.2, if your environment includes a Meeting Server, then your users will see a new Sametime Meetings section in their client view.

Lotus Notes 8.5.x users with the embedded Sametime client will see it as well. Refer to the Sametime Meetings area in the following screenshot:

If you click on the meeting icon, then a new dialog box appears that shows several options for what will be displayed in the Sametime Meetings area. Scheduled Meetings displays all meeting events, and you can click on the item to quickly join the meeting.

To set preferences for meeting room servers, a new section has been added to the preference list. Sametime Meeting Rooms allows users to create profiles for each meeting room server community to which they belong.

Meetings can also be accessed directly from the new Sametime meeting shelf. In Sametime 8.5.2, meetings are now "virtual conference rooms" in that the meetings are persistent and users will not have to schedule them each time they need to meet online.

The best meeting experience is from the rich meeting client that users simply either access through the Sametime Connect client or the embedded Sametime client by clicking on Enter Room. Some new meeting features include:

Meeting rooms can also be accessed from a web view which is hosted by the Meeting Server's HTTP proxy. The new web meeting view has a similar appearance to that in the rich meeting room client. However, users cannot modify the screen layout dynamically and there are a reduced set of features. If a user is on the Proxy client, then they will automatically be directed into the browser interface for their meeting as the Proxy client has no rich meeting client available to it. Whichever meeting client you use, you and your users will notice how quickly the meeting rooms load in the browser. In previous versions of Sametime, a Java applet was required to load first. This was sometimes difficult to implement especially when users did not have administrative access to their workstations or were working from kiosks. With the Ajax underpinnings of the new web interface, this is no longer an issue. And meetings are easier to join—with just a single click.

Sametime 8.5.2 introduced a new client—a lightweight browser-based client that can also be used by smartphone clients such as iPhone, iPads, and Android devices. These new Sametime clients include functions such as awareness, online status, business cards, and group messaging.

The following table describes Sametime client operating systems and browser support. Check out the following website for more detailed and up-to-date information: https://www.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg27016451.