Dryfta is and event
platform that is comprised of a free suite of applications that are designed to
collect event data and measure event ROI, sell tickets, build event websites,
launch mobile apps, engage and network attendees, retrieve and manage leads for
exhibitors with a unified CRM, segment attendees and create email campaigns,
create shareable real-time custom reports and more.
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Webinato
Score5 out of 10
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Webinato is a webinar tool from omNovia Technologies, a provider of web conferencing software.
I can't provide a scenario where Dryfta could be well suited. I guess it's a matter of delivering what has been promised on time, and without having to invest thousands of hours in extra work, as it was in our case. If it worked properly it could be a good tool for any conference.
It has a lot of functionalities (website and administration) all included in the same platform. If it worked properly, it allows you to organise a conference paper-free.
Multilingual issues. Although it is advertised as multilingual, it didn’t really work as such. The many issues that popped up throughout the conference preparation were fixed little by little at a cost in time, from help desk emails and to struggles with the unfriendly UX.
Admin pages reloaded every time you clicked on a button (their developers seem to ignore Ajax technologies). It was time-consuming and required constant page searches.
Inflexibility in many of the supposed functionalities it offers.
Certificates were not modifiable nor custom when we had to send them (it was solved months after the conference finished when we were surprisingly contacted by the help desk).
Problems with the size of images to be displayed on the site, very small fonts and limited options to display content. We had to hire a professional developer in order to get a graphically consistent and presentable website.
Very poor mobile version. Too big margins, unreadable text, endless text blocks and lists, distorted pictures, etc.
Issues with the ordering of the authors’ names for different proposals (authorship being so important in research).
Fixed, inflexible fields in the contact sheets, speakers info, and so on.
Special character issues (due to Latin characters and other types used in linguistic research).
Not being able to include links in the HTML editor due to Dryfta's inadvertent decisions to block them.
Only one Superadmin user allowed to access the full functionalities of the platform, so we had to share it (consequently not knowing who did each action).
Problems with the generation of reports and the high complexity of their interface.
Some issues on the mandatory anonymity. The double-blind review process not fully respected due to unclear user info and options, with other issues coming up on the go such as unwanted info in automated notifications and messages in the Welcome dashboard.
Not being able to use the other payment methods on the platform because they were incompatible with the conference country.
Missing information and time wasted when creating events for sessions with info that already existed in the server that randomly failed to be selected. These issues were reported even with video proofs (help desk didn’t believe us), and were never solved. We had to repeat the same processes again and again, never knowing what was going on
Aesthetics - in short, there are many competiting softwares and web platforms that have sharper visual qualities and more intuitive design. As the digital divide shrinks, users desire simple, easy-to-learn interfaces. More tech-savvy and higher production quality users will dig deeper for the more granular elements that omNovia supports so well. Also even more customizable webinar environments; perhaps more detailed themes.
Hand in hand with the UI renovaton, I'd suggest a company rebranding. Instead of appealing to the corporate environments, I think the technology and applications omNovia represent can have a much wider use case.
Mobile - going more mobile than omNovia already is. Products like Bambuser and Adobe Connect have a more integrated and intuitive mobile apps that simply out perform OmNovia.
Even though OmNovia offers great products, our recent account rep has been difficult to deal with. We are being charged for services we've never been charged for before. She is responsive and helpful but we were not aware of these additional charges when making our deal with our previous rep.
It was quick, that's all we can say. Quite a few times they sorted out the problems and issues. But, sadly, sometimes their answers were useless and irritating (not addressing the problem or simply ignoring it, "passing the buck"). In some cases, they pretended the problem didn't exist and we had to send them videos as proof. No response to that.
Having an assortment of licenses at my disposal with different web platform products was key given the clients included embassies, consulates, universities, etc. all over the world in different bandwidth environments, with different media equipment available, etc. omNovia performed well for the users with moderate to high bandwidth and higher quality equipment. Low-bandwith users did use the audio chat function but preferred less intense platforms that allowed for video. Other products: Watchitoo, Adobe Connect, Google Hangout, WebEx, GoTo Meeting.
The overall performance was okay in the end, but it was due to our team's commitment and effort. Without that extra work, the results would have been awful.
in person networking since OmNovia allows for live events to be streamed. Without this ability we would only have regular webinars and would miss out on the networking opportunity.
