Webex Meetings: We Work Well With Others, Including Microsoft Teams

Customers tell me time and again that they want flexibility and choice in the tools they use to get work done. One of the ways we support your choice is by making sure the Webex portfolio works with the third-party tools you may already be using. Webex not only works across our own hardware and software, but also with third-party solutions like Slack, Microsoft Teams, Workplace by Facebook, and more.

Some of you may use tools that are mandated by IT, others may have chosen the “free” tools route. That’s perfectly okay with us. With this in mind, we released our initial integration with Microsoft Teams, in the form of a Webex Meetings bot, almost a year ago. With the bot, users could invite other members to their Personal Room URL, regardless of who owns the URL. The bot provided both command line and message extension styles to do this easily.

We received an overwhelming response from our customers on our initial release. While it was functional, customers wanted a tighter integration with an advanced set of features and an enhanced user experience. As a result, we provided richer functionality through the Microsoft Teams tab in the 2.0 release that is now available in the Microsoft Teams App Store.

With this tab functionality, it’s even easier to access our market leading meetings solution. The one-stop dashboard gives you access to every meeting control you told us you care about.

The Personal Room meeting section allows a one-click start of your own Personal Room meeting. When starting the meeting, you can optionally invite all channel members to the meeting. If all members are invited, a meeting join link will be published in the group to inform members about the meeting.

The Upcoming Meetings section lists all events in your Microsoft Outlook calendar, as well as the ability to schedule a new meeting. You can also edit Webex Meeting invitations without leaving the tab. You can start your own meeting, or join someone else’s meeting with one button.

The Join Meeting section allows one-click joining of recently visited Personal Rooms. You can also type in Personal Room meeting ID or meeting number of the meeting you intend to join.

There’s no heavy lift and shift involved or need for a Webex login. It has automatic mapping of MS Teams credentials with Webex, enabled by your Webex site administrator. We’ve done all the work on the backend, so all you have to do is add the tab and you are on your way to great meetings.

Be sure to check out Collaboration Help to learn how to enable this functionality.

My team and I are laser-focused on making sure Webex makes it easier for you to work, collaborate, and create together. It’s important for us to “work well with others.” Why? Because we want to bring you the best meeting experience, in the environment you choose. That means making Webex Meetings functionality accessible, even via (sometimes) competitive, third-party solutions.

There are a lot of choices in the market today when it comes to collaboration and meeting tools. Obviously, our choice (hands-down) is Webex, and we hope it’s yours too. But if your organization relies on Microsoft Teams for messaging, you can still get the best meetings experience with our rich and simple to use integration, provided by Cisco Webex Meetings.