It gets harder and harder to find true differences in functional capabilities between web conferencing products. But I know of one feature that is still not commonly implemented across different platforms… The ability to change display names inside a session.
Most collaboration products have the ability to show some or all of the participants in a webinar, webcast, or web meeting. They might offer different display options, such as letting attendees only see the names of presenters, or letting attendees see first names only, or only letting presenters see the participant list. Whatever the case, there are times when you want to change the way a name shows up.
You certainly don't want the professional nature of your webinar ruined by having to display questions and comments coming in from audience members who registered as "Monkeybutt Pinkcheeks" or "Your Product Sucks." But more commonly, you might want a way to accommodate a presenter's request on the fly to show their professional credentials as "Dr. So-and-so" or to use a different form of address such as William instead of Billy. And sometimes you don't notice a typo in the spelling of the name until show time.
I can think of three potential authority classes that a meeting host (and conferencing product) might want to allow for:
1) Let the host update displayed names for presenters and attendees.
2) Let presenter-level participants adjust their own display name.
3) Let all participants update their own display name.
Each level of functionality is appropriate for certain events and not for others. So this is something that works best as an optional setting under a host's control.
If your web conferencing product doesn't have the ability to change displayed names inside a session, you should suggest it as a potential enhancement to add to the development roadmap.
