This week at Cisco’s Collaboration Summit in Phoenix, we made a series of significant announcements regarding the convergence of the Cisco Webex and Spark platforms. This included a new Webex Meetings application, a new Webex Teams application (formerly known as Cisco Spark), the new Webex Assistant, and the Webex Share hardware device.
Watch a quick overview of our announcements and customer reactions to the new stuff.
This quick walkthrough is intended to give you a very simple Spark bot that responds to commands typed into a room with a few example responses – nothing too fancy, but easy to build on. The commands will be passed to the bot using mentions – so if I type into a room where the bot is a participant. Speed up workloads, track projects, and work faster together right in Webex.
The convergence of the Webex and Spark platforms is far more than just a rebrand. Significant technical work has gone into combining these platforms, and I wanted to highlight several of the key customer benefits that come as a result.
Spark Meetings are dead. Long live Webex meetings.
Prior to this convergence, we had Cisco Spark with its own type of meeting – the Spark meeting, but we still had Webex with its own Webex meetings. Users could join Cisco Spark meetings only from the Cisco Spark app, and Webex meetings from the Webex app. Users could join Webex meetings from Cisco Spark if they were clever, but they did not get any of the critical meetings features. With this convergence – it’s all simplified. Everything is a Webex meeting, with a common set of features – roster, meeting controls, PSTN connectivity, and so on. All Webex meetings are joinable from either the Webex Meetings application or the Webex Teams application. Webex Teams supports a new type of meeting, called a Webex team meeting, which takes advantage of the participants in a space to provide a highly secure easy to use new type of Webex meeting – the team meeting.
The Webex backbone network now powers all meetings.
Prior to this convergence work, both Webex and Cisco Spark had meetings capabilities, but they were quite disparate. Even in the back end, Webex meetings were supported by servers sitting in the Webex data centers, and interconnected with the powerful Webex backbone IP network. This IP network provides global transport between customer ISPs and our meeting servers, optimizing for video quality. Cisco Spark meetings were powered by servers in public clouds, and weren’t making use of the Webex backbone.
Now, with this convergence, the Webex backbone is used for all meetings, regardless of whether they are joined from the Webex Meetings app or the Webex Teams app. We have meeting servers in both public clouds and in our own data centers. The Webex backbone interconnects with both of them. This means that customers get the best quality, lowest latency experience possible. This is particularly important for video, since the Webex backbone was purpose built for video meetings.
Control Hub gains powerful features for Webex analytics and troubleshooting.
Prior to this convergence, the Cisco Spark management tool – Control Hub – provided some basic analytics for Cisco Spark. Webex customers used a different tool – the site admin – and had a good set of analytics capabilities there. With this platform convergence, the Control Hub now supports customers using both Webex Meetings and Webex Teams, and its analytics functions for Webex Meetings have taken a significant jump forward.
Cisco Webex Web App
Hybrid Media Services is now called Video Mesh – and works for all Webex meetings.
Prior to this convergence work, Cisco Spark had an amazing capability called hybrid media service. This service allowed a customer to deploy servers on premise which could be used for the audio, video and content share streams for Cisco Spark meetings. But, they worked only for Cisco Spark meetings. With this convergence, these hybrid media nodes can now be used for any Webex meeting type – regular Webex meetings, PMR meetings, and Team meetings.
Users joining those meetings from SIP endpoints, our cloud connected video endpoints, or the Webex Teams app, will connect to these media nodes when joining any of those meetings. With this convergence, we’re also renaming hybrid media services to video mesh, in recognition of the truly disruptive and now broad applicability of this capability.
The industry’s first secure multi-company Collaboration solution.
Specific to Webex Teams, the backend convergence has enabled us to deliver this industry first. It is increasingly common to work outside the boundaries of your company, and our competitors solve for this by allowing guest accounts to be created on their team collaboration instance in the cloud. End users need to ask for administrator intervention to create guest accounts, they need to maintain multiple accounts, and they need to log in and out of the app when they want to collaborate outside of their company. This is a huge pain, but it also creates a huge security risk. Guest accounts enable users to share information outside of their company in a way that cannot be tracked by compliance tools. This means that an employee can accidentally – or purposefully – share confidential information outside the company, and the company won’t be aware of it, and won’t be able to take steps to remove the leak.
We have solved this problem with Webex Teams. All Webex Teams users reside in a single, shared cloud instance – each with just a single account. There are no guest accounts. B2B collaboration is built in so users can work with everyone, both inside and outside of the company, from the same application, without asking their IT guy for help. In addition, this means that each company can make sure that their employees don’t share confidential information outside of the company, and if they do, it can be detected and remediated. Webex is the industry’s first Team Collaboration solution to deliver secure multicompany collaboration.
As you can see, the convergence of Cisco Spark and Webex is not just skin deep – it goes to the platform level and brings an amazing set of benefits to our customers.
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.
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?
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.
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?
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…
Webex Sign In
You can stay in Teams and send messages to your contractors, suppliers, or clients who use Webex.
Webex Spark Board
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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