CONNECT Advisor: Getting Started Guide
CONNECT Advisor: Getting Started Guide
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File Transfers................................................................................................................................................ 68
Screen Shot Transfer ................................................................................................................................ 74
Send and Receive audio calls ................................................................................................................ 78
User Settings ............................................................................................................................................... 84
Changing the Project ............................................................................................................................... 85
Saving Conversations ............................................................................................................................... 86
Share Screen / Redlining ........................................................................................................................ 90
Whiteboard .................................................................................................................................................. 93
Configuration Error Issues ...................................................................................................................... 97
Contact ........................................................................................................................................................... 100
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CONNECT Advisor
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What is CONNECT Advisor?
CONNECT Advisor is a software component/desktop application which provides a
unified interface for you to interact with various Bentley content in one location, thereby
eliminating the need to browse to various sources individually. CONNECT Advisor boosts
productivity as it reduces the time required to access and get information. You get the
ability to browse-search-view-interact without having to leave the application that you
are working on.
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CONNECT Advisor Dialog
Onboarding Screen
When CONNECT Advisor starts up for the first time, it shows an onboarding
screen to help you familiarize with the application; it also contains an onboarding
video which explains the features and capabilities available in the CONNECT
Advisor. This onboarding screen is also accessible via the About Box.
You can turn on/off the display of the onboarding screen on startup via the
checkbox “Show on startup”, near the bottom left of the dialog.
To disable showing of this screen on startup you can uncheck the option “Show
on startup”.
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Dialog graphic controls
The CONNECT Advisor main dialog is made of the following sections or controls:
① ⑤
② ⑥
③ ⑦
⑧
⑨
⑩
⑫
⑪
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Control descriptions
1. Search Box:
You can enter the “search phrase” that you want to find through CONNECT
Advisor. As you key in the “search phrase” CONNECT Advisor performs a search
in the existing displayed list and highlights the items that match your search
phrase.
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The search box also auto-suggests strings that might have been previously
searched by other users:
When you press the ENTER/RETURN key or click the search icon (as described in
step 5 below), a global search is executed, and results are returned from various
available content sources.
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CONNECT Advisor search works in two ways:
As you type in the search box, matching results are highlighted in yellow. E.g. If you have
many items in the current display, and you type in the search box, the matching entries
will be highlighted.
If you press the ENTER/RETURN key or click the search icon, CONNECT Advisor finds all
content that matches the search literal, irrespective of the product and displays them.
The results are sorted based on a relevance algorithm.
One of the new features that have been added in this version is the support for search
using Boolean expressions. CONNECT Advisor now supports AND, OR and NOT
operations in a Boolean search. You can search using various combinations of the
Boolean expressions, some of the examples are given below:
• String1 AND String2 The result set will have posts contains both terms/keywords i.e.
• String1 & String2 String1 and String2.
• String1 + String2 e.g. MicroStation & Accudraw
• String1 OR String2 The result set will have posts contains either terms/keywords
• String1 | String2 from either String1 or String2.
e.g. MicroStation OR ProjectWise
• String1 NOT String2 The result set will have posts relevant to term/keyword String1
• String1 -String2 but not to String2.
e.g. Isometric -design
• “String1 String2” An exact match for “String1 String2” is looked and the result
set will contain posts that explicitly includes “String1 String2”
e.g. “Cable Manager”
• String1 String2 If there is no boolean operation given, the result set will have
the same effect of searching for String1 OR String2
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2. Tool Bar:
This control has the following options.
a. Sort. Sort by Author, Description/Title, Course Level, Relevance, and Date.
These options are displayed as per the applicable content types. Sorting
can be done in ascending/descending order.
b. Filter by Content. Option to filter the items based on the Content-Type
(i.e. Communities/Learn/YouTube/News and
Announcements/Events/Product Help etc.) It is useful when you need to
see only the items in the list of a particular content type.
c. Filter by Tags. Option to filter the items list based on the available tags. It
is useful when you need to see only the items in the list of a particular tag.
The tag filters are reset when the view is changed.
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3. View Criteria:
This control allows you to filter the items per your selected criteria.
There are four-tab controls
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General
This tab contains a drop-down that allows selecting content from various sources.
Most Recent Content: shows all the recent content for Bentley Communities,
Bentley Learn, and YouTube.
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Search Results: shows your search results.
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QuickStarts: shows all quickstart learning courses that are available for your
currently active product.
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Upcoming Events: shows all upcoming events for the next 60 days. Events such
as webinars, seminars, Live virtual conferences, industry events, virtual and
physical classroom events etc. are shown here with a calendar.
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News and Announcements: shows the latest Bentley corporate news.
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Recommendations
The Recommendations tab contains personalized Learn videos and suggestions,
along with items marked as your favorites and content that are recommended by
others.
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Ongoing Trainings: Any Learn courses/training that you take via the Learn Portal
or CONNECT Advisor, will be shown over here. You can review your ongoing in-
progress training in this view.
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Suggested Trainings: Based on your in-progress trainings, CONNECT Advisor
suggests some Learn courses. These Learn courses are suggested using an
algorithm that looks at your current in-progress courses and learning paths. Self-
assigned and Organization assigned Learning paths are taken into consideration
when suggesting new courses for you.
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Recommended by Others: If any content (Learn, YouTube videos, Community
posts, Events, News and Announcements etc.) is shared/recommended to you by
anyone, you can see that content in this section. In the displayed items you can
see the name of the user who has recommended the item to you.
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Once you have viewed the item and you no longer require it, the content item
can be removed from your personalized list by selecting the item, right-clicking it
to display the context menu and clicking remove from the context menu.
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Recommend to Others: If you see any content (Learn, YouTube videos,
Community posts, Events, News and Announcements etc.) and you feel is
important, you can recommend the content to others using “Recommended to
Others” feature.
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You can go to the content, right click on that item and select Recommend to
Others, after this a window will open.
You can enter Name or Email of the person you wish to share this content in
recommend to others window.
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After clicking the Recommend button, if the content was successfully shared, the
recommendation status window will get displayed against entered userName or
Email.
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Favorites: The Favorites feature allows you to bookmark the content (Learn,
YouTube videos, Community posts, Events, News and Announcements, Product
Help etc.) of your interest as a favorite item. Whenever you are viewing any
content, you can right click on that item and add that item to the Favorites List.
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Clicking on the Favorites section displays the favorites that you have added. You
can view your favorite items and remove items from the list as required.
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Contextual
As you work in your product, content that is applicable to your current action
(current command in progress) is shown here, this functionality is currently only
available for all PowerPlatform based applications.
Expert Advisor
For more details on Expert Advisor see section given below.
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Offline Viewing
CONNECT Advisor now works in two modes Online and Offline. In offline mode, a
user can view Learn videos(modules) even when he is not connected to the
internet.
When you do not sign-in into CONNECTION Client, CONNECT Advisor will
start/automatically switch over to “Offline mode”. When you sign-in back into
CONNECTION Client, CONNECT Advisor will open in normal mode with all the
content visible.
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Behavior in Online Mode:
When CONNECT Advisor is launched in online mode, along with all your regular
user interface, you will now see a new tab “Offline Viewing”. In this tab, you can
view the list of all the learn modules that you have added to the offline list for
viewing later/offline.
As you are watching a learn module, in the learn video window, you can now
select any module and click on the “Add to offline viewing” icon and the learn
module will get downloaded and added in offline viewing list. These videos will
be downloaded in the background and available for viewing later. The download
status/progress of each of the learn modules is also shown in the list.
Today there is a limit of 10 modules per product.
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Behavior in Offline Mode:
In Offline mode, CONNECT Advisor starts in a minimal mode, here you will be
able to view any learn videos that you might have downloaded for viewing
offline.
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You can view the video by clicking it normally on it and the video will be played
in a new video player. If you wish to remove the video from the offline list, you
can right click on an item and select the “Remove from offline viewing” option.
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4. Displayed Items:
This section contains the list of items per filter criteria, clicking on the item of
interest will perform the action associated with it.
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ii. Bentley LEARN /YouTube videos: The requested video would play
in the in-product video player.
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You can download and save the Hands-on files on local disk by clicking on it.
There is a notification window popup shown in the windows taskbar when a file
download begins and when a file download is completed.
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Similarly, self-assessments would open in the default browser, and
you can view and take the assessment course.
iv. Event: Specific events would open in the default browser, and you
can view more information and register for the events of interest.
v. Product Documentation would open in their respective associated
applications.
5. Search Icon:
Clicking on this icon would perform a global search and results matching the
search terms would be returned from various available sources.
6. Help/About:
This drop down has two options
Clicking the first option which is help or pressing F1 would launch this help
document.
Clicking on the second option would open the ‘About’ dialog for the CONNECT
Advisor, and you can view the program information over here. The Onboarding
screen which gives a brief information on CONNECT Advisor can be launched
from here by clicking the “Learn more about CONNECT Advisor” link.
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7. Expand/Collapse:
CONNECT Advisor now has the feature to expand/collapse the size of the display
dialog. When in the expanded state, the dialog will occupy the entire length
available on the screen. When in a collapsed state the dialog will only show the
header area and will hide the displayed items.
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8. User Settings:
CONNECT Advisor can be customized as per your personal preferences. The user
settings feature allows you to achieve this. CONNECT Advisor has various views
available such as Most Recent, Search Results, QuickStarts, Upcoming Events etc.
Each of these views has its own Sort and Filter criteria. You can set up these
preferences to use your own saved settings or use the last settings that you were
using.
The User Settings dialog box, allows you to select what settings you want to use.
There are two options:
• Use Last Session Settings
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Changes made to the sort/filter settings by you will be used the next time
when you open CONNECT Advisor. Changes from the last session are
preserved and used on next launch.
To reduce the amount of space used by each item to display, you can now show
the titles available in each item. Selecting this option hides the description
thereby consuming less screen space and displaying more items. Hovering over
the displayed item would show its description in the tooltip.
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Auto-Refresh content
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If this setting is checked, CONNECT Advisor window will be the topmost
window on your desktop. This setting is particularly useful when you are
viewing videos and content and want to work side by side with your other
applications.
Use this setting if you want to launch CONNECT Advisor as soon as your
product starts. When this is checked CONNECT Advisor will automatically
launch itself, whenever a new session of your product is started.
9. Refresh:
You can refresh the available content in CONNECT Advisor window anytime by
clicking on Refresh icon while the active tab is Most Recent, Search Results,
QuickStart, News and Announcements and Upcoming Events.
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10. Knowledge Maps & Learning Paths
Knowledgemaps are a way that shows your progress and your expertise for the
product in use. It shows the status of the trainings that you have
started/completed. Knowledgemap is the best way to see how you are doing in a
particular area of your product in a graphical format.
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Learning Paths
Learning Paths is a feature that allows you to view your assigned learning paths
(Self Assigned and Organizational assigned learning paths) in a tree format It
also shows the status of the trainings that you have started/completed in a
particular learning path.
If there are no learning paths assigned to the user, this functionality is not
available.
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11. Message Bar:
The message bar provides information and error messages occurred during the
lifetime of the CONNECT Advisor. It also displays the current number of items
visible in the items list.
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12. Zoom Selection:
You can select the zoom level to zoom in/zoom out the items on the list so that
more/ fewer items are visible on the available items list.
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Expert Advisor
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ExpertAdvisor
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Configuring Expert Advisor
For using Expert Advisor you are required to do configuration on the CONNECTION
Center.
1. Open the Bentley CONNECTION Center (also known as Connect Portal) using the
link https://connect.bentley.com/
You should see a screen like the one below, click on your organization.
2. After the Enterprise Portal opens, click on the Roles and Permissions.
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3. You should see a screen like the one given below.
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4. Click on “New Role”.
7. Once the roles are created, select the roles and assign the following General
Permissions and Service Access Permissions as given in the screen below,
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9. Your Enterprise Roles and Permissions are now set.
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Setting up the Projects
1. To set up projects to be used for the Expert Advisor, click on the Projects section
of the CONNECTION Center, you should see a similar screen.
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3. Once the project is selected, click on the “Manage Members” link and the Project
Team Management page will open.
4. Select the user whom you want to participate in Expert Advisor and assign them
“EA User” roles by using the manage roles functionality.
5. If you want to designate any user as an Expert, assign them “EA Expert” role.
6. This should be done for each member you want to participate in the Expert
Advisor.
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Using Expert Advisor within CONNECT Advisor
When you launch CONNECT Advisor normally within your design file, you should see a
new tab “Expert Advisor”.
Clicking on Expert Advisor for the first time in a session prompts you to select a
connected project with which Expert Advisor will work.
Select the project that you have been added as EA User/EA Expert.
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Once the Project is selected, you will be shown all the members of the project, who are
authorized to use Expert Advisor.
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In the contact list presented, you can click on the name of the member to start
interacting with them.
you can double-click the name of the member and a conversation window will open for
you.
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You can start typing and interacting with the member, you can perform audio calls, file
transfer, screenshot transfer by clicking the appropriate buttons.
In the Expert Advisor main window, you can change your status to any of the available
options as seen.
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Dialog Controls
Logged in
user name Logged in
user Status
Contacts
Change Project
Saved
Conversations
Project
Members
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Receiving
User
Receiving User
Status
Conversation
Area
Text Input
Send
Area
Button
Share
Screenshot
Screen Share
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Text Conversation
You can start typing in the space provided and hit enter/return or click on the send
button to transfer the text to the other member.
If another member has initiated a conversation session, you will receive a notification as
seen below, clicking on the notification will allow you to interact with the member.
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If you wish to decline the conversation session, you can click on the “x” button. If you do
not respond to the invite in 30 secs, the other member will receive a notification that you
are unable to interact now.
If someone tried to contact you and you were unavailable, all missed messages will be
shown to you the next time in the users’ conversation session.
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You can perform conversation with multiple members separately in each members
session.
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File Transfers
While a conversation session has been initiated, you can click on the more icon and in
the extended menu presented, click on the share file icon,
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After the file has been selected, it will be transferred to the other member, you can click
on the cancel button to cancel a file transfer session.
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A progress bar is shown to both the sender and receiver, depicting the amount of file
transferred and the total bytes.
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After the file has been successfully transferred, double-clicking the icon will open the file
in its associated program.
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If the other user has sent you a file transfer request, you will be notified and you can
either save the file or cancel the request. Selecting action “Save” will download the file to
the directory as specified in the settings. By selecting action “Save As” you can download
the file to any valid location of your choice.
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In this version of Expert Advisor, only the following file types are supported
- Pdf
- Text
- Image (jpg, jpeg, png, gif)
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Screen Shot Transfer
Click on the Screen Shot share icon to share the screenshot of the available displays.
After you have clicked on this icon, you are presented with a screen select pop-up, you
can select any one from the available screen to perform a capture and send the
screenshot.
After you have selected the screen, you will be shown a preview of the screen, you can
now either send the entire screenshot or a partial screenshot by capturing a region.
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Click Capture region to select a part of the entire screen.
Click send, if you want to send the image as shown in the preview window.
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After you click send, the screenshot file will be sent across to the other member of the
conversation.
Similar to file transfers you can cancel the screenshot transfer anytime. A progress bar is
shown to both the sender and receiver.
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Send and Receive audio calls
In the conversation window, you can click the audio call icon to initiate an audio call.
The other person will receive a notification of an incoming call and he can either accept
or decline the call request.
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After the incoming call is accepted, the call will be connected and both parties can
participate in an audio conversation.
The microphone and the speaker device can be selected via the Audio devices options
by clicking on the more icon in the conversation window.
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To end the call, any participating member can click on the hang-up icon to end the call.
After the call has ended, both the users will be shown the duration of the call that took
place.
When an audio call is in progress (after the call has been connected), you can record the
audio call. To record the call, click on the more icon and in the extended menu
presented, select “Start Audio Record”. The recordings are saved in the user’s profile
under a special folder named “Videos\Bentley\Recordings”.
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To stop the recording, follow the same process and click on the “Stop Audio Record”.
A notification icon and status of the call recording will be show in the chat window.
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User Settings
Settings that are specific to Expert Advisor are shown in the main CONNECT Advisor
settings dialog box.
File Transfer
The default save location for incoming file transfers can be specified in the option
provided in the settings.
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Changing the Project
As Expert Advisor shows only the members that have an EA User or EA Expert role
defined in the currently selected project, you can change the project, if you want to
interact with members of another project.
If there are any active conversations/audio call in progress, they will be terminated and
the user will be logged into the new project that the user has selected.
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Saving Conversations
The user can save all the activity that he has done in the conversation window for later
reference. For saving the current session conversation, press “Ctrl+S” to save the active
conversation or use the option “Save Conversation” popup shown when you click on the
more icon.
All saved conversations are shown in the Saved Conversations tab in Expert Advisor.
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Double-clicking on the username in the saved conversation in the presented list will
bring up a dialog which contains the actual conversation transcript.
You can also search inside saved conversations. In the search box provided, enter the
string/text that you want to search and the saved conversation list will be filtered to
show the saved conversations that have that string/text.
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Share Screen / Redlining
Screen Sharing feature in Expert Advisor is the ability to share the screen with a
colleague/ another Expert Advisor user. It behaves the similar way to an audio call, where
the user can share his screen with the other user with whom he is having a conversation.
When you start a conversation with anyone, simply press the "Share Screen" button and
your selected screen will be available for the other person to view live.
If you have multiple monitors then, you can redline on your live screen, just like the
Whiteboard feature, this feature allows the ability to visually collaborate with a
colleague/other Expert Advisor user. It provides the ability for users to draw, highlight,
add text annotations on the live shared screen. This enables users to discuss and develop
their ideas or projects in a flexible and visual collaborative space.
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When you start a conversation with anyone, if you have multiple “Share Screen with
redlining” is the default option available. In the live screen area, you can see the shared
desktop and you can also do multiple actions such as draw graphics, write text, highlight
area, show pointers.
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Whiteboard
Whiteboard feature in Expert Advisor is the ability to visually collaborate with a
colleague/other Expert Advisor user. It provides the ability for users to draw, highlight,
erase items, add text annotations on a canvas. This enables users to discuss and develop
their ideas or projects in a flexible and visual collaborative space.
When you start a conversation with anyone, simply press the "More" button and then
click on the “Whiteboard” button from the list.
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In the Whiteboard canvas area, you can do multiple actions such as draw graphics, write
text, highlight area, show pointers, and save the whiteboard as an image.
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Configuration Error Issues
As Expert Advisor is dependent on multiple factors such as having a CONNECTED
Project, having a valid access to the CONNECTED Project, there could be scenarios where
the user is unable to connect/login into Expert Advisor.
1. If the Expert Advisor cloud service is down and the user is not able to log into the
Expert Advisor system, then the following error message is shown to the user
This message is also shown if the network is down.
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2. If the user has not selected a project then the following error message is shown.
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3. If the user has not been assigned an “EA User” or an “EA Expert” role in the
CONNECTED Project, then the user is shown the following error.
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Contact
For any issues and questions related to this document, please drop an email with your
questions to
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