Log in

During installation system administrators can create separate domains for different groups to give controlled access to data. These domains, or “spaces” all have authentication to ensure security, but the application supports more mechanisms than just authentication to provide a secure place for sensitive information of this nature.

Figure 1: The login screen

Creating a new meeting room

After logging in you get into the lounge area (see Fig. 2. ), where you can create new rooms. By default rooms are public, anyone who’s authorized to the given domain can join, no special invitation or registration is required. Invitations are easy to send, see the Sharing, inviting others section. The number of rooms running in parallel, as well as the number of people joining a room are unlimited.

After this, the room will be created and you are automatically joined as the first participant.

As of version 15.6.29, you can create private rooms as well, that only you, the creator can see and use. These rooms are designed to give you a sandbox where you can refine your ideas before showing it to others. All functions are available in private rooms except for Inviting others.

Figure 2: Creating a new meeting room in the lounge

Joining a meeting room

You can join any existing room in a domain accessible to you. Once you’ve logged into the lounge area, you will see a list of existing rooms (see Fig. 3. ). The list is sorted by most recently used rooms at the top and it indicates who’s currently in the given room.

Figure 3: The lounge area with existing meeting rooms

The interface

Figure 4: Main panels of the interface

The interface of a meeting room consists of five main areas (see Fig. 4. ):

1. header - this area shows basic information such as the room title, list of participants and includes export, sharing options as well as links to the help

2. chemical editor - this is where you can design and review chemical ideas together with your team members

3. list of uploaded and saved ideas - this area displays all important ideas created during the meeting or problems yet to solve

4. property viewer panel - this area displays information about the molecule in the editor organized by different topics

5. and the chat box - this is a standard instant messaging area, where you can send messages to others in the room

Import

Using the “Import” menu (see Fig. 4. note 3), you can load multiple chemical structures into a list to work on. These can be the ideas or problems you wanted to discuss. The source of imported structures can be chemical structure files on your local file system, or another room in the same domain. Generally all commonly used file formats are supported (see ChemAxon File Formats documentation ), but the precise list is a question of configuration, so please contact your system administrator for details of your setup.

Load structures into the editor

To work on a specific chemical structure, you need to load it into the editor (see Fig. 4. note 2 ). The contents of the editor are shared with all meeting participants and all modifications are synchronized in real time. You have a number of options to load structures:

Real time sketching

The main goal of Marvin Live is to let chemists work on the same molecule at the same time. To do this, all you have to do is draw in the editor (see Fig. 4. note 2 ). Any modifications you make are immediately visible to others, along with an automatic moderator that shows to the others you’re drawing at that moment.

Getting real time feedback

Marvin Live has a plugin system for providing real time feedback that can be used to get calculated properties, database cross-checks and comparisons to reference molecules as you draw (see Fig. 4. note 4 ). This plugin system is entirely optional and highly customizable, so please contact your system administrator for details on your setup. If you miss anything important from the plugin list, please contact your system administrator or ChemAxon.

From this point, the plugin will automatically refresh its contents with every structure modification in the editor.

To showcase the typical functionalities, here are a few simple examples for the real time feedback system:

The chat area

To share links or references, or simply send instant messages to team members in the same room, you can use the chat box below the editor (see Fig. 4. note 5 ).

Snapshots - described in the next section - can be easily referenced in chat messages by typing their number, e.g: #4. When clicked, this would highlight the given snapshot in the list of saved ideas.

Saving interesting molecules

As you use the application, you will come up with noteworthy new designs. You can use the snapshot system to save them to the list (see Fig. 4. note 3 ). This is the same list where you would import your starting ideas, making it the one place where you can manage the different topics and results for a given discussion.

Creating reports

After a meeting, it’s customary to create an accurate report for everyone affected by the decisions made on a meeting. To ease this administrative task, automatically generated reports are available in Marvin Live (see Fig. 4. note 1).

By default 4 export options are included: PPTX , DOCX , SDF and MRV , and the application includes an export plugin system that allows customization of the available export formats and addition of new ones. You can use these to share the results as a slide deck or to continue working in another desktop or web application.

Reports generally contain 1 slide or 1 row per snapshot, with each record showing the chemical structure, its author and the timestamp, optionally the action item and any information returned by the real time feedback plugins.

Sharing, inviting others

Meeting rooms can be accessed by anyone who can log in to the given domain. Invitations to the room can also be generated by the “Invite others” button in the top right corner (see Fig. 4. note 1 ):

This option lets you to send connection information in an email to the people you want to work with, by opening your default email application with the necessary details already filled in. Alternatively, you can simply copy and send a URL through any messaging application.

Invited participants will be asked to log in with their own credentials, before joining a room.