Adobe Connect Community

( View the tutorial .)
Each of the little windows in an Adobe Connect meeting room is called a pod. The Pods are arranged on the meeting room stage to create a layout. Layouts define which pods are available in a meeting room and how they are oriented. Hosts are able to arrange, re-arrange, and resize pods in a layout to best fit the needs of the meeting.

Adobe Connect provides three default layouts for meeting rooms: Sharing, Discussion, and Collaboration. These three default layouts reflect Adobe’s best guess as to what you will need for your meeting and are created when the room is created. However, rooms are not limited to just these three layouts. Nor are they limited to just this default template. Any number of customized layouts can be added to a single meeting room. And any meeting room can be used as a template to create additional, duplicate rooms.

Switching Between Layouts
Hosts can switch between layouts during the meeting to better facilitate the meeting’s activities. For example, the Sharing layout is designed with the Share pod occupying much of the stage and is intended for displaying content, like PowerPoint presentations. On the other hand, the discussion layout has the Chat pod and the Camera and Voice pod placed more prominently on the stage and is designed to facilitate interactions between participants.

Planning customized layouts around anticipated meeting activities helps the meeting flow and proceed more smoothly.

Only Hosts can design layouts and switch between layouts during a meeting. Presenters and Participants have to work with what the Host has made available.

Switching Between Layouts Options
A Host has two options for switching between layouts:

• From the "Layout" menu at the top of the window, select the layout you want to use.
• Or, on the "Layout Selection bar" at the bottom of the window, click the button for the layout you want to switch to.

Moving and Resizing Pods
Within a layout, Hosts can move pods by clicking and dragging the pod’s title bar. Individual pods can be resized by clicking and dragging the edges of the pod.

To lock a layout to prevent pods from being moved and resized, click the “Turn off move and resize pods” button in the “layouts toolbar,” or check the “Move and Resize Pods” option in the “Pods” menu.

Creating a Custom Layout
From within a meeting room, Hosts can create and customize new layouts. To create a new layout, click the "Layout" menu on the top menu bar and select "New Layout.” Or, click the “plus sign” on the Layout Selection Bar.

The New Layout window will appear.

• Select either to create a new blank layout or to duplicate an existing layout. For this example, we will duplicate an existing layout.
• Enter a name for your new layout. We are calling our new layout “Guest Speaker.”
• Click "OK."

After creating the new layout, continue customizing by adding additional pods, deleting existing pods and resizing and rearranging pods.

In this example we are deleting the Poll pod and adding a small Share pod.

To remove pods from the layout, click the “Hide Pod” icon in the upper right corner of each pod.

To add additional pods to the layout, from the "Pods" menu on the top menu bar, select the pods you want to include.

After selecting and arranging pods, if applicable, continue with the customization by uploading content. Adobe Connect characterizes uploaded files as pods, even though you may think of them as files.

Managing Layouts
If you use the same meeting room repeatedly for many different meetings, at some point, you will probably want to delete layouts that are no longer needed and reorganize to better suit your needs.

• To manage the layouts in your meeting room, select "Organize Layouts" from
  the "Layouts" menu.
• The Organize Layouts window contains options for deleting, renaming, and
  changing the order of layouts listed in the menu.
• To delete a layout, select the name of the layout from the list and click
  the delete button.
• To rename a layout, select the name of the layout from the list, click
  the "Rename" button, enter the new name, and click "OK." In
  this example we are changing the name of the Collaboration layout to "Group
  Discussions"
• To change the location of the name of a layout in the list, select the
  name and click the "Move Up" or "Move Down" button.

Changing the order of layouts in the “Layout Toolbar”
To change the order of layout buttons in the “Layout Toolbar,” press and hold the mouse button on the layout button you would like to move. Continue to hold the mouse button and drag the layout button to its new location.

Saving a Layout as a Template
Meeting creators (only) can save a customized layout as a template for future meeting rooms. For more information, see Creating Templates under Creating/Editing Meetings.

Creating Effective Layouts - Advanced
In addition to the basics about using layouts, you may be interested in the more advanced features covered in Adobe’s short tutorial listed at the Adobe Connect Pro Users Community site (Connectusers.com.) While targeted for people who are meeting hosts, it does cover a wide range of topics for best practices using layouts. To view the Adobe tutorial, please go the following URL: Creating Effective Layouts for Connect Meetings