An electronic device, computer program product, and method avoids presenting certain objects during a video communication session. During a video communication session with second electronic device(s), a controller of an electronic device identifies baseline image(s) from an image stream provided by an image capturing device of the electronic device. The baseline image includes a primary image portion of participant(s) and including a scene of objects within the foreground or background of participant (s), during an initial portion of the video communication session. The controller monitors the image stream for a subsequent detection of the primary image portion and of non-participant(s) or object(s) as a secondary image portion that is not included within the baseline image(s). The controller responds to detecting the secondary image portion subsequently appearing within the image stream by communicating, to the one or more second electronic devices, a substitute image stream that does not present the secondary image portion.

Provided is a server device with which a participant in a conference can easily acquire information pertaining to another participant. The server device is provided with an acquisition unit and an information provision unit. The acquisition unit acquires a profile of each of a plurality of users using a conference assistance system. The information provision unit provides, to a first participant participating in a conference from among a plurality of users, a profile pertaining to a second participant participating in the same conference as that in which the first participant is participating.

A communication/collaboration system enables a first user at a first entity to define a collaboration object, and to invite a second entity to collaborate on the collaboration object in accordance with a hierarchy with corresponding permissions. A second user at a second entity is enabled to collaborate on the collaboration object. A communications log regarding the collaboration between the first user and the second user is maintained. A communications log between the first user and other users at the first entity is maintained. A communication interface is displayed on the first user computer system that displays the log of communications between the first user and the second user on the collaboration object, together with the log of communications regarding the collaboration object between the first user and other users at the first entity, and excluding communications regarding the collaboration object between the second user and other users at the second entity.

A method includes receiving a selection of a subgroup of participants from a group of potential focus group participants, placing each participant in the subgroup of participants in a waiting room environment, establishing a respective testing video conference between each participant in the subgroup of participants and the second user and confirming, based on the respective testing video conference, a respective technical ability to carry out a video conference. The method includes establishing the video conference comprising each respective confirmed participant and the second user, receiving respective data as part of the focus group from each respective confirmed participant and presenting live data associated with the video conference of the focus group to the first user at a user device. The method and associated network server enable a quick way to establish a focus group and then carry out a focus group on a topic of interest.

A computer-implemented online conferencing transactional platform system comprising an interaction module, a video-conferencing module, and a storage device may allow multiple participants in a video-conference to access, co-browse, collaboratively edit, and sign a transactional document. An interaction module fetches an image of a transactional document and a field identifier for an interactive transactional document element to be filled out from a remotely-connected secure signature API, and displays the image of the document, along with the interactive transactional document element on a webpage interface to a moderator and a signer end user in a video-conference. The interaction module receives a filled-out transactional document in an I-frame from the secure signature API, allowing the signer end user to sign the transactional document using a secure embedded signature process.

Techniques are described for expediting a generation of a means of communication between two people associated with different organizations. A first person associated with a communication platform may submit a request to the communication platform to generate an invitation to communicate via the communication platform. The first person may provide the invitation to a second person directly or via the communication platform. Responsive to receiving an indication that the second person has accepted the invitation, the communication platform may generate the means of communication between the first person and the second person. The communication platform may update respective user interfaces to include the means of communication. The communication platform may process messages and/or data between the first person and the second person that is input on the respective user interface and sent via the means of communication.

A message management method includes receiving, by at least one processor of a computer system, a share request for a message group that includes at least one message among messages in a chatroom; and forwarding, by the at least one processor, based on receiving the share request, information about the message group to a server which stores the information about the message group in association with the chatroom and shares the message group with users in the chatroom.

Techniques for committing back end computing resources to an online stream of requests for data from client devices are described herein. A polling schedule server (e.g., a reservation management system), may receive polling reservation requests from a plurality of client devices, may evaluate each client device's need for “fresh” data based on a number of input signals, and may assign the client device a polling slot (e.g., a reservation for a future polling time). The polling scheduler server may subsequently receive a polling request from a client device and, upon validating a token received from the client device as well as a difference between an assigned polling time and the polling request timestamp, may grant the polling request by transmitting a request to one or more communication system servers, receiving data from the communication system servers, and providing the data to the client device.

A multiuser, collaborative augmented reality (AR) system employs individual AR devices for viewing real-world anchors, that is, physical models that are recognizable to the camera and image processing module of the AR device. To mitigate ambiguous configurations when used in the collaborative mode, each anchor is registered with a server to ensure that only uniquely recognizable anchors are simultaneously active at a particular location. The system permits collaborative AR to span multiple sites, by associating a portal with an anchor at each site. Using the location of their corresponding AR device as a proxy for their position, AR renditions of the other participating users are provided. This AR system is particularly well suited for games.

Embodiments include an audio analyzer to analyze audio data received from a user computing system operating as a participant in a conference managed by a conferencing application and to detect one or audio pause conditions; a video analyzer to analyze video data received from the user computing system and to detect one or video pause conditions; and a conferencing manager to automatically pause distribution of the audio data to other participants of the conference when the one or more audio pause conditions are detected and automatically pause distribution of the video data to the other participants when the one or more video pause conditions are detected.