One thing we all have in common is – regardless of our job functions – we meet to get work done. I believe meetings can be amazing game-changers. When people can meet and collaborate from anywhere in the world, at any time, we can accomplish so much more. At Webex, we’re laser-focused on delivering the best possible experience so you can be productive in your meetings. We want your meetings to be intuitive, easy, and smart so we just unveiled a new set of innovative features we’re calling Cognitive Collaboration designed to do just that. Here’s a deeper look at some of the new Webex Meetings features my team and I use every day, to get work done.
People Insights: Know More About Who You are Meeting
Sometimes I get invited to present to customers at a moment’s notice. It can be tough to get up to speed on the company and people I’m meeting with, with only a few minutes to prepare. That’s where our new People Insights feature helps you learn more about the people in the meeting. It works both inside and outside of your organization, just by clicking a button. This is a great feature when you need to get up to speed quickly on a prospective new client, potential new hire, or just meeting someone for the first time.
Webex uses Cognitive Collaboration technology to bring context and intelligence into your meetings. Webex gathers publicly available content and generates structured profile data, merging and updating it on a regular basis. Things like photos, bios, even news articles, social links, and directory data (if you are in the same company) are aggregated on a contact card for fast viewing. This is real-time data, not static, one-dimensional profiles. In today’s age of “information now,” this helps you know who’s-who so you can engage quickly and make the most of your meeting time.
Productive Collaboration: Whiteboarding in Webex Meetings
Recently, we added whiteboarding into Webex Teams to allow for real-time collaboration, but occasionally you may be in online meetings with people who haven’t yet adopted Webex Teams. Now, Webex Meetings users and those on video devices can also join in on the collaboration. I recently shared this technology at Cisco Live Melbourne and it was an “aha” moment for the audience.
The whiteboard in Cisco Webex Meetings acts just like a conventional whiteboard or flip pad, but better and more intuitive. Everyone in the meeting not only sees the drawings and notes but can add their input, too. You can enhance your meeting presentations with visuals you can edit, as well as create drawings to help share your ideas with others. Like many of you, I collaborate with my virtual and remote teams on-the-fly while we are in meetings. We use this feature to capture our notes, collaborate together, and visually convey our ideas. This is a great feature when you are brainstorming together online and need to make smarter, faster decisions.
Improved Video in Webex Meetings and Events
We’ve done a lot of work to bring Webex Meetings and Webex Devices together, so we’ve just doubled our support for the number of video devices supported in a Webex Meetings conference to up to 200.
We also heard your feedback about wanting the same video-centric improvements in Cisco Webex Events as you get with Webex Meetings. While Webex Events once only allowed you to use webcams, we have now extended video support to all video devices and endpoints for panelists. I recently presented in a Webex Event with over 200 participants. All the panelists were in different locations and sharing content from their video devices. The high definition, high quality, video-first experience was awesome. It creates a more impactful, engaging, and seamless experience for participant when they can see the faces of the presenters and panelists.
Smoothly Share Live Motion Video or Other Media
Sharing rich video and media content is a must-have for engaging meetings so we’ve made sure Webex Meetings is optimized to share video content at higher frames per second. Now, you can see video content and animation in high resolution, with 30 frames per second sharing. A higher frame rate gives you smoother motion and more images, so you can focus on what’s happening in real time. Audio and video stays perfectly synchronized so all participants can see and hear at the same time, no matter how you connect – from any platform, mobile device, or room system.
Share Anywhere with Webex Share
Webex Share has become an essential tool for huddle and small spaces. It provides wireless content sharing, without cables, dongles, or tedious adjustments to AV settings. It’s really cool because it fits in to the palm of my hand so I can carry it with me to a customer meeting, hotel conference room, or an ad-hoc huddle space. Now, you can use the Webex Meetings desktop app to pair with a Webex Share device for use in a meeting when you join. When I plug it into any display, it greets me, shows my calendar schedule for the day, and invites me to share content to the screen.
Any content I want to share locally or in a Webex Meeting is automatically shown on the Webex Share device. Just plug it in, sign in to the Webex Meetings desktop application, and you are on your way to seamless, wire-free sharing. Webex Share uses ultrasonic proximity pairing with the Webex apps to enable you to control the in-room collaboration experience through your laptop or mobile device within 3-5 seconds.
Cisco Webex Meetings Virtual Desktop App: New VDI client
We recently improved the Webex Meetings VDI experience by making it even easier to join via a Webex video device or the Webex Teams app. We know virtual desktop infrastructures (VDI) are essential and many of you may work in industries such as financial and healthcare where VDI support is a requirement. Meetings are connected as SIP call, delivering both audio and video with single join action – there’s no need for callback or call-in. The new Webex Meetings VDI client expands your personal desktops with all the security and simplicity of centralized management. It keeps media on the edge, eliminating network bandwidth usage, and lowering data center compute costs so you get great real-time audio and video quality with a seamless overall meetings experience.
In today’s work-anywhere, anytime on any device mobile workforce VDI continues to be an important element of your collaboration experience. Customers who are already using it tell us they trust in the Webex backbone managed network, optimized for media and supported by the security and management of Cisco. This powerful combination enables us to deliver the best-in-class media quality and industry-leading collaboration.
By Javed Khan
Published with permission from blogs.cisco.com.