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Pay attention to user feedback, WebEx learned, because it might lead your business in valuable new directions.

The premiere online conferencing company had been pursuing a strategy of building its meeting tools into third-party applications, such as those for CRM or training vendors, so that users could easily start up a live meeting when they needed to.

But executives from companies that used those apps suggested another approach. Their employees weren't generating income when they were in those other tools, they said; their employees made money when they were in meetings. It would make more sense to have employees working with dedicated meeting applications that tied in to other business tools, rather than the other way around.

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That got the people at WebEx thinking they should turn their strategy around, and the result is the upcoming WebEx Connect. Connect is a meeting tool with a tabbed interface that lets users switch between business applications, providing meeting and collaboration tools across the board. Using Web 2.0 parlance, WebEx calls it a business mashup.

WebEx Connect combines a rich client desktop application, an AJAX-based Web client, and mobile communication access. The simple three-panel interface makes it easy to find what you're looking for. The left-hand column, called "Sessions," lists online meetings and shared spaces for your department. The large middle column offers a tabbed interface where you can pull up your personal dashboard (displaying customized calendar info, news feeds, and other automatically updated business information streams), a library of shared documents, conferencing tools, or third-party applications that work with WebEx Connect.

The document library will offer check-in/check-out functionality, so you don't need to worry about having your comments overwritten by someone accessing the same file. The right-hand column is called "Guests," and it lists your team members and other Connect-using contacts, along with their meeting status.

Connect will be a two-way communication device, not only pulling data from the various information sources, but returning updated data, as well. Whatever information you enter or change in Connect will be sent to your team members, so that everyone is working on the same page.

When the program launches in the first quarter of 2007, it will offer over 100 partner applications that work with it, from companies like SugarCRM, Zoho CRM, SoonR, and BMC Software, which are all a part of the initial launch. WebEx expects to add another 100 partner applications soon after. If you want to tie-in a tool that isn't WebEx Connect-enabled, the company had made it easy to do so. Cordys, the SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) provider, is a partner, so programmers can user the included Cordys integration tools to connect with other applications. With Cordys, WebEx Connect will even work with applications that don't support XML.

WebEx Connect will be a free download when it launches, although users will need to pay for WebEx meeting services, as they do now. The result, WebEx is hoping, is that online meetings will become an integrated part of people's work day, easy to schedule and access, and performing fluidly with other applications.

WebEx Connect will make it easy to combine WebEx online conferencing with your existing business applications.