Webex delivers pre-built integrations with the tools you use every day, such as Microsoft, Google, and Salesforce. Other integrations can be set up using the Webex App Hub to connect your teamwork with the work happening in tools such as ServiceNow, Trello, Asana, and Jira. Learn more about Webex integrations Explore more collaboration solutions. You can hold meetings with your team on Microsoft Teams with Cisco Webex Meetings after you or a member of your team has installed the Webex bot on your Microsoft Team. For a team meeting, only one member of the team needs to install the app. To install the Cisco Webex app, go to Teams on your Microsoft Teams then click on Manage Teams. Webex delivers pre-built integrations with the tools you use every day, such as Microsoft, Google, and Salesforce. Other integrations can be set up using the Webex App Hub to connect your teamwork with the work happening in tools such as ServiceNow, Trello, Asana, and Jira. Learn more about Webex integrations Explore more collaboration solutions. Schedule, start, or join Webex Meetings directly from Microsoft Teams We have created a Webex tab within Microsoft Teams that is super user friendly. You can schedule a meeting for the channel by selecting ‘Schedule’, then you can fill in all the details in the dialog pop-up.
There was a time when if you wanted to learn more about Webex, a simple search with your good friend Google would give you a pretty good idea. But recently Cisco has made some changes to its marketing strategy, extending the Webex family to include Webex Meetings, Webex Teams, Webex Room series, and Webex Share.
Just between you and I, there are many useful, and dare I say even ‘wow’ features available, which will make your working life easier and even a bit more fun. I will talk about that in detail in another day, but today I wanted to address the common question; What’s the difference between Webex Meetings and Webex Teams, and what should I use when?
What is Webex Meetings?
Webex Meetings is a virtual meeting place where you can meet in real-time from your web browser, the app on your computer, or even access it on your mobile. This gives one consistent experience, providing options to connect easily wherever you may be. Webex Meetings is globally available, secure and made to optimise bandwidth, to reduce delays so that everyone has a good experience no matter where they are in the world, which I can vouch for having delivered global projects using Webex Meetings.
Webex Meetings gives you HD video with customizable layouts making a good alternative to face to face meetings but without the travel. It keeps teams singing from the same hymn sheet with the help of screen or application sharing, get creative with the Whiteboard, and the list goes on. Basically, you can get stuff done quickly and efficiently using Webex Meetings.
What is Webex Teams?
Formerly known as Cisco Spark, Webex Teams is an app for continuous teamwork with video meetings, group messaging, file sharing and whiteboarding. Webex Teams goes beyond the meeting itself, after all, meetings are just one part of a team journey. It aims to integrate the whole collaboration experience before, during and after meetings.
All this collaboration and action happens within Spaces. You can create Spaces and add people who share the same interest or are on the same project team as you.
Check out Stu’s blog explaining exactly what Webex Teams is
What is the difference between Webex Meetings and Webex Teams?
This question is often asked by people familiar with Webex Meetings, who are then asked to try Webex Teams. As is the typical experience, new tools and products are launched with the drop of an email with little to explain the purpose and benefits to the people. This creates a confused and unsure workforce.
Traditionally Webex Meetings is used for all types of meetings from team meetings scheduled with an invitation, to a 1:1 ad-hoc meeting where a meeting link is shared. Within Webex Teams you can also schedule meetings or schedule from your email calendar. But it’s even easier to start ad-hoc or on the fly meetings with people.
I thought it may be clearer to create a small table showing the feature comparison.
Webex feature comparison
I have a couple of recommendations from my own experience using both Webex Meetings and Webex Teams:
Scheduled, client or more formal meetings
I would advise using Webex Meetings, it’s easy to schedule and amend, there are a number of ways your attendees can join. Maybe they have low bandwidth so the option to dial into the meeting would be perfect for them.
Ad-hoc, 1:1 or internal team meetings
I would suggest using Webex Teams in these instances. It’s my favourite feature and the simplest way ever to start a meeting. It’s even easier than making a phone call and has been my biggest ‘WOW’ to date. We use it numerous times a day, see for yourself give it a try.
Presentation delivery
So, Webex Meetings wins here, you can load your documents before your attendee have even joined and annotate together. If you are using the Whiteboard, however, Webex Teams wins simply by saving your Whiteboard to your space for everyone to see, edit and review. Your Whiteboard in Webex Meetings is gone and lost forever unless you remember to save it to your desktop and email it to everyone.
Continue the conversation: persistent chat
Webex Teams is the definite winner here. Within your spaces, you can start a conversation before, during or after your meeting, keeping the conversation alive and everyone on track.
Host privileges
Webex Meetings allows for a more professional type of meeting and what I mean by that is, you can mute all attendees on entry so no disturbance if someone is late to your meeting or eating crisps. You can pin the presenter video so everyone is focussed on the message being delivered.
Files and documents
A great feature in Webex Teams, which has saved my bacon a few times is, all files and documents shared are stored in your space and are easily searchable. Taking the stress and frustration away when time is of the essence.
My Recommendation: Webex Meetings or Webex Teams?
Webex Meetings and Webex Teams are both great at what they do, the right one for you very much depends on what you want to do with it. Establishing your business drivers early will help you design use cases that work for your people. And, of course, it doesn’t have to be one or the other. Webex Teams and Webex Meetings can work in perfect harmony together if those use cases have already been established and clearly communicated.
Leaving change to chance never works
Employees won’t use your new digital workplace tools if you don’t tell them why and teach them how. Future Worx gets everyone using new tools in the best ways by raising awareness, revealing the value and showing how to work smarter in this digital age. They’ll be happier and more effective. You’ll transform the business.
Get in touch to learn more about how Future Worx can transform your workplace.
5 Ways to Connect Microsoft Teams and Cisco Webex in 2021
For many reasons and in many businesses, we regularly see organizations with instances of both Microsoft Teams and Cisco Webex.
This post addresses how businesses got to this situation and highlights the best ways to connect the two platforms together.
Why Microsoft Teams and Cisco Webex?
Common reasons for instances of both Microsoft Teams and Cisco Webex include:
- Legacy or current Cisco hardware like telepresence, VoIP handsets, and Cisco Spark boards
- Microsoft 365 packages offering free Skype for Business and Microsoft Teams licenses
- Mergers and acquisitions where one company uses Cisco Webex and the other uses Microsoft Teams
- A new CIO or IT Manager started and implemented their preferred
solution - You interact with guests from other organizations that use different messaging platforms
Can Microsoft Teams replace Webex?
Microsoft Teams has tons of great features, like grid videos and custom backgrounds. You can integrate your conversations with Microsoft 365 and access direct routing.
But Microsoft Teams isn’t the right solution for everyone. Trials in tainted space nurse droid custom input.
If you try to shift everyone to Microsoft Teams, you risk isolating some of your team members who use Webex.
People who don’t want to stop using their preferred app won’t switch easily. This puts your team at risk of shadow IT and other security issues.
It’s always better to give your team the freedom to use the tools they prefer.
If you do need to connect the two together, the next section outline five ways to connect the two platforms together.
1- Webex call features in Microsoft Teams
If all you want to do is connect your Microsoft Teams account holders with Cisco Webex calling features, here’s how:
In April 2020, Cisco announced a new Call Appfor Microsoft Teams. The app launches calls through Webex technology, even when you click the call button in Microsoft Teams.
To access this functionality, follow these steps:
- Verify users have accounts activated in the Webex Control Hub
- Ensure users are registered to the Cisco Webex Calling or Unified Communications Manager
- Make sure users have the Webex app
- Ensure you have Administratorprivileges for Microsoft Teams
- Update phone numbers for users in the Azure Active Directory
With us so far? Great.
Head over to the Microsoft Teams Admin Center and click Teams Apps followed by Manage apps. You can search for the Webex Call function and toggle the app status to allowed.
Remember to update your permission policies to allow third-party apps too.
In the Teams apps menu, click on Setup policies and add the Cisco Webex Call app to your Microsoft setup. Users will now be able to click Webex Call at the bottom of a window when chatting in Microsoft Teams.
Or employees can click on the Webex Call function on the left-hand menu bar and just tap in the number of the person they want to call through Webex.
Pros:
- Simple way to connect Webex calling functionality with Microsoft Teams
- Embedded buttons in Teams make the function easy to use
Cons:
- Only works to connect two VoIP calling strategies. You can’t connect your chat messages or file sharing this way.
- Calling opens a new window, which means there are more tabs for users to keep track of.
- Only works to add Webex Calling to Microsoft Teams. You can’t add Microsoft calling to Webex instead.
2 – Cisco Webex and Microsoft 365 integration
Cisco recently announced integration between its Webex app and the Microsoft 365 suite.
How do I integrate Webex with Office 365?
Users can access files like apps like SharePoint and OneDrive from within the Webex app.
If your end goal is to use the Microsoft 365 suite within the Webex app, this integration will work just fine.
How do I integrate a Webex team with Outlook?
Cisco Webex Teams Using Markdown
Go to your Cisco Webex admin Settings.
Click on Outlook then Outlook settings. You’ll have the option to Connect to Outlook. Choose Yes and hit the Save button.
Having more than one app integrated with Outlook sometimes causes problems with Webex. Before you integrate Webex and Outlook, you’ll have to unregister other tools. This includes removing Skype for Business connections.
Once your Outlook integration is ready, you can see the status of Webex contacts in Outlook.
Pros:
a. Users no longer have to leave their Webex app if they use Microsoft 365 for productivity tools like Microsoft PowerPoint and Microsoft Word.
b. You can benefit from Microsoft Teams governance and data privacy from Microsoft 365 whilst never leaving your Webex app.
c. Share content created in Microsoft apps in Cisco Webex spaces.
Cons:
a. This integration is available for multiple Microsoft apps, but not Microsoft Teams.
b. If you’re a Webex for Web user, you can only view these types of files, but not make
The Cisco Webex and Microsoft 365 integration is great for users that are happy to live in Webex – but it doesn’t take into account users that prefer Microsoft Teams for collaboration. Age of empires 2 definitive edition price.
3 – Bot integration for Microsoft Teams and Cisco Webex
If This Then That (IFTTT) helps apps and devices work together.
There are examples of IFTTT working in homes and businesses alike.
When rules are set for one app or device to do something based on the behavior of another app of device, these are called recipes.
From common scenarios like turning up the heating in your home when the temperature drops below a certain threshold to syncing your Instagram and Dropbox account, recipes come in all shapes and sizes.
When setting recipes for both Microsoft and Cisco, this typically includes what happens on Microsoft Teams when a message is posted in Webex.
For this scenario, a Webex users sends a message and the bot in Microsoft Teams gets a notification.
Pros:
a. Bot integrations come with many pre-built recipes to choose from across a range of apps and devices.
b. Familiar look and feel to consumer IFTTT apps.
c. Options to add your own customized recipes.
Cons:
a. Administration time can be lengthy as scenarios have to be set up one-by-one.
b. When new users are added, administrators must build new recipes.
c. Functionality across platforms is limited.
d. Cross platform experience is not seamless. Notifications are received in a bot rather than native to a chat, space or direct message etc.
4 – Host Webex meetings in Microsoft Teams
For users that prefer Microsoft Teams for messaging and collaboration, but must use Cisco Webex for meetings, there is the Cisco Webex Meeting app.
This is perfect for running Cisco Webex meetings direct from Microsoft Teams.
The meeting app is also available for Slack, Workplace from Facebook, and Google Calendar.
Pros:
a. Schedule and join Cisco Webex meetings without leaving Microsoft Teams.
b. Microsoft Teams users just need to add the Webex Meetings app to their Microsoft Teams app.
c. Simple administration in the Cisco Webex Control Hub.
Cons:
a. The Cisco Webex Meetings app for Microsoft Teams doesn’t support accounts on webex.meetings.com, on meetingsln.webex.com, or on Cisco Webex Meetings Server sites.
b. Limited to Cisco Webex Meeting functionality.
c. Messages, chats, files etc cannot be exchanged via the Webex Meeting app for Microsoft Teams. A meeting must be launched to communicate across platform.
d. Jonathan Dame wrote on SearchUnifedCommunications that customers of both Cisco and Microsoft using the integration have labelled it clumsy, forcing them to consider back to working in silos.
5 – External federation for connecting with guests on different platforms
Do you communicate with people outside your organization?
Do they use apps other than Microsoft Teams?
Webex In Teams
If the answer is yes to both of these questions, according to research, Cisco Webex is one of the most favored.
When this is the case, it becomes extremely unproductive moving out of Teams, into your external contact’s choice of app, and starting the conversation again.
Or even worse, end up resorting to email like it’s the 90s. (Okay, email has a purpose but you get the point).
That’s why Mio has created universal channels for Microsoft Teams with Webex…
You can stay in Teams and send messages to your contractors, suppliers, or clients who use Webex.
They stay in their platform too and Mio translates the messages across platform.
And it’s not just messages that are supported! GIFs, emojis, channels, DMs, and message edits/deletes are all supported.
If this sounds like something you need, install Mio into either Microsoft Teams or Webex.
You choose which platform you use and your external contacts choose theirs.
If you’d like to learn more about enabling cross-platform messaging, you can watch our on-demand webinar with Mio CEO, Tom Hadfield, here.
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