The Story of Webex Teams…Revisited!

Collaboration Quick Talks Series

The Collaboration Quick Talks blog series highlights ‘What’s Next in the Story’ and why we’re excited about the future of  collaboration. The Quick Talk was filmed at the Webexperience Zone at Cisco Live U.S. in San Diego. In the Webexperience Zone Theater, Cisco executives and subject matter experts presented the best of collaboration insights and strategies for today’s solutions during short talks, presentations, and panels. The second Collaboration Quick Talk unfolds the story of Webex Teams, and top-nine new releases you need to know about.

What Makes a Hero?

Everyone loves a good hero story. Especially one where the hero overcomes obstacles and antagonists and rises to the occasion! Well back in June at Cisco Live, I told such a story during my Lightning Talk. It was the Story of Webex Teams. I’m here now to revisit that story and talk about how the journey has continued to unfold since June.

Watch my Webex Talk on The Story of Webex Teams

Creating the Hero’s Journey

During my talk, I used the slide below to show key Webex Teams functionality and capabilities released over the past five years. It’s the evolution from “Project Squared”, a cloud messaging app aimed at SMB, to an enterprise-grade, highly-scalable/available/secure, collaboration platform with calling, messaging, meetings, devices, bots, and more.

Webex Teams Today

You may think the story ended there because seriously, what more could you want?!?! But nope! In this new world of agile software development, Webex Teams is cranking out monthly releases and this story is only getting better. To continue this story, here are my top-nine new areas.

Mute Everyone

No online meeting is immune to background noise –dogs barking, kids yelling (guilty!), loud typing, etc. They all interrupt meetings. Rather than trying to identify whose microphone it’s coming from, you can now mute EVERYONE! And that’s not all… Webex Teams introduced “democratized meetings” with gives power to all attendees – not just the host. So ANYONE can mute EVERYONE.

People Insights on Mobile

By now I’m sure you’ve seen a lot about People Insights, a key part of our Cognitive Collaboration story.It lets you see rich, contextually relevant, professionally applicable info about people you’re collaborating with, without leaving Webex Teams. And this capability is now also available on the Webex Teams mobile client.

Buttons and Cards

I always say that when you collaborate, you’re never just collaborating with PEOPLE. You’re collaborating with CONTENT. With DATA. With APPLICATIONS. This is why Buttons & Cards are so important! They allow you to interact with bots and apps – which can now send these cards with buttons for easy interaction. This will revolutionize how you inject workflow into collaboration.

Pinned Favorites

Some of us have literally hundreds of Webex Teams spaces. I tell customers to keep a list of 8-10 “favorites” – the spaces they’re most actively engaged in – and constantly prune. Now, you can pin those favorites to the top of the spaces list to help you focus on those key conversations.

UCM Calling Enhancements

Native Unified Call Manager integration added a robust telephony option in Webex Teams. The initial release had a baseline set of capabilities and since then it’s been a rolling thunder of new ones. Since Cisco Live, we added these UCM Calling enhancements: conference calls (up to 8 people), call forwarding, single number reach, secure calls (with encrypted audio), and the ability to merge, conference, and transfer calls when you’ve chosen your desk phone from Webex Teams.

Edit Your Message

Edit Messages is a functionality that has to be there. But rather than rush out a capability, the product team took time to think it through – because edit message has implications around compliance, notifications, user experience – areas that needed to be examined to create the optimal solution.

Custom Branding

One customer saw this and said, “THIS IS AWESOME!!”  The Customer Branding capability allows admins to apply their chosen logo and color to the first column of Webex Teams, ensuring that their brand and corporate identity can be reflected in the application experience they provide to users.

Voicea

There’s been a ton of press since Cisco announced their intent to acquire Voicea. I’ve been using Voicea’s intelligent bot, EVA (Enterprise Voice Assistant), in my Webex Teams meetings. It can transcribe, take notes, and create action items from meetings. And the integration is only getting tighter.

Support for Cisco Headsets

I love my Cisco 531 headset! And you can now use Cisco Headset 500 Series with Webex Teams to join meetings and handle calls. It lets you mute and unmute yourself from the headset in meetings and calls, and put yourself on hold when you’re on a call.

So that’s where we are now. Perhaps I’ll check in once a quarter and hit you with a new top-nine! Until then, happy collaborating!

We’re interested in uncovering your Webex hero story. Drop us a comment below – we love to hear from heroes!

Connect with all the blogs in the Collaboration Quick Talks Series!

Learn More

People Insights: Getting to the Heart of the Matter

Cisco Announces Intent to Acquire Voicea

Intelligent, Integrated Management with Cisco Headsets

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