Meeting Manager Client/Server

CyberMatrix Meeting Manager is a Windows application that can be used for scheduling meetings with your staff within companies. The client/server edition enables team leaders and members to organize virtual meetings within a local network, in order to efficiently plan tasks by staying connected to the same tool.

How it works is that the server component can be installed on the computer that will host the planner. Based on an IP address and port that can be specified by the team leader, the team members can connect to the server by installing the client component on their own machines. The client can also be installed on the computer running the server but this means you have to run the setup file twice because the two components cannot be installed at once.

Make sure to start the server with admin rights to avoid any permission issues. It creates an icon in the systray, which can be double-clicked to bring up the configuration panel, view connection settings, and make any necessary adjustments. For example, you can change the default server name and description, schedule jobs to run automatically, change the IP address and port number that clients have to connect to, as well as manage allowed and blocked computers by IP address.

The client is wrapped in a user-friendly interface, where all information gets synced across all clients connected to the same server. However, information with new, deleted and modified entries is not refreshed in real time, which means that it's likely for team member to clash. Instead, you have to manually refresh information from the "Bookings" menu (or press Ctrl+R).

When adding bookings to the organizer, you can fill them with all sorts of details, such as resource, date, topic, contact, notes, attendees, equipment, catering, attendance type, and frequency. It's also possible to send email notifications and create confirmation receipts. Plus, you can turn to an advanced search tool to quickly locate bookings by date range, topic, notes or other criteria, view booking or schedule reports, as well as check out the current week or just the weekdays at a glance. Tools are available for managing all data in detail.

CyberMatrix Meeting Manager Client/Server had minimal impact on the computer's performance on Windows 10 in our tests. However, we ran into all sorts of issues while trying to have a normal workflow with this app. For example, it popped up errors related to server connection settings although no changes were made since the last stable server run, which were resolved by simply exiting and restarting the server. Errors also occurred when trying to start the server after modifying the default IP address and port number. The workaround was to set the new IP address and port in the setup wizard when reinstalling the client.

All aspects considered, CyberMatrix Meeting Manager Client/Server has a pretty good idea of staff planning across a local network but we feel that the server component has a lot to work on. For instance, the "File extensions" area in the "Customizations" panel is a bit too complicated for casual users to think about changing.