First Virtual Communications Tuesday began shipping Click to Meet 4.1, the latest update to its flagship desktop video, audio and data conferencing tool.

Chief among the new features in the update is the ability to switch the user interface to a group mode, allowing a room of people to participate in a conference displayed on a large TV or projection screen.

Click to Meet is primarily designed for the desktop user that has a Webcam and headset. It uses a proprietary protocol to connect users over a LAN, WAN or even the public Internet, and can be used for application and document sharing. The group video feature is an option that can be turned on or off depending on the setting.

“Customers are using Click to Meet in a conference room, so we changed the interface to make it more applicable in a conference room/group setting,” says Roger Wallman, director of product management at FVC. He adds that while the company added a group feature at the request of customers, it’s not necessarily FVC’s intention to compete head to head with traditional group conferencing vendors such as Polycom and Tandberg.

Paul Hester, senior client support specialist at Columbus, Ohio-based Liebert, is looking forward to the update, particularly for the new group interface. “Even using our current version, many meetings will have four or five actual users in a conference room and project the PC image on a screen,” Hester says. “This will make it a little easier for those folks to see. Any enhancement in that regard is good.”

Liebert, which makes gear for cooling and protecting sensitive electronic equipment, uses Click to Meet to connect its various engineering groups located around the globe. The software allows them to jointly work on a CAD drawings produced with SolidWorks. “They can do application sharing with their CAD program from one PC, and the engineers from the other part of the globe can take control, rotate drawings and make changes,” Hester says.

Liebert has a number of traditional video units from Polycom as well, but relies on Click to Meet for its application sharing features, Hester says.

Other enhancements in version 4.1 include integration with IBM Lotus Domino as well as improved integration with Microsoft Outlook and Live Communication Server. With these updates, users can initiate Web-based meetings in Click to Meet from Windows Messenger, MSN Messenger and Lotus Sametime. Users can also stream meetings in Windows Media, Real or QuickTime formats to view-only participants. An FVC software development kit makes a streaming media encoder a meeting participant. Streaming users are connected to a standard streaming server, not to the FVC Conference Server, which quarterbacks the meeting.