News and Announcements

Webex Site Upgrade to Version 40.9 - September 8th

Posted: 2020-08-24 08:34:58   Expiration: 2020-10-01 08:34:58

Disclaimer: This news item was originally posted on 2020-08-24 08:34:58. Its content may no longer be timely or accurate.

Introducing major quality of life improvements, user interface updates, and enhanced features. 40.9 will be released on September 8th.

For a full list of 40.9 updates, please go to the Latest Updates


1. Video Breakout Sessions in Webex Meetings - Available Sept. 15th

    -Breakout sessions allow you to place your meeting participants into smaller groups to collaborate and share ideas. This is great for workshops, classrooms, or for when you just need a moment to talk privately with a few others, outside of the main session.

    -Breakout sessions are easy to create and manage. You can even have participants assigned automatically. Inside of the breakout session is like being in a smaller meeting, complete with audio and video where participants can collaborate and share content, or even ask the host for help from the main session. The host can bring everyone back into the main session at any time or after a scheduled time limit.

2. In-Meeting Co-host Role - Available Sept. 15th 

    -As a meeting host, you can now assign other meeting participants as cohosts. Cohosts share your host-level privileges like muting and unmuting other participants, moving participants to or admitting participants from the lobby, and more!

    -Cohost is the evolution of the previous alternate host role. The "alternate host" setting has been renamed to "cohost" so that "only the first cohost with a host license can start the meeting. Everyone who previously had set their meetings and personal rooms to "anyone can host" will be automatically transferred to this new setting.

    -You can also assign cohosts on the fly, directly in-meeting, by simply right-clicking the participant and changing their role to Cohost.

    -You can have as many cohosts in a meeting as you wish.

3. Optimized Audio and Video Preview

    -The larger, optimized Audio/Video Preview window makes it easier to look your best and find the settings you need before joining a meeting.

4. Clear and Easy-to-find Meeting Controls

    -Meeting controls are now clearly labeled and located at the bottom of your meeting window, which means you’ll always have them in sight, but without them covering up shared content or video.

5. Contextual Option Menus

    -Audio settings and camera settings can now be conveniently accessed in the menus at the right of their respective mute and camera buttons.

6. Consolidated Panel Controls

    -Panel controls (like Participants, Chat, and Q&A) can be found towards the right, where the panel opens.

7. Webex Meetings Lobby Improvements

    -You’ll now have access to a meeting lobby for scheduled Webex meetings, just like for Personal Room meetings. Previously, if a meeting was locked, all users were blocked from joining a meeting. With this update, we’re aligning the experience with Personal Rooms, where users will be able to wait in a meeting lobby when the meeting is locked.

    -In addition, when you schedule a meeting, you’ll be able to choose one of the three options to define the behavior for external attendees joining the meeting:

        -Can join the meeting

        -Can join the meeting only if I let them in

        -Can't join the meeting

8. My Contacts and Company Address Book

    -Modern View users will now have easy access to their contact distribution list and company address directly from their scheduler. Saved contacts will automatically be available` when they search or fill in invitees.

9. Classic View Deprecation of Meetings

    -Starting with the September 2020 (40.9) update, we will be deprecating all Webex Meetings capabilities from Classic View. Customers will continue to have access to the Webex Events and Webex Training capabilities. However, they will no longer be able to access their Webex Meetings-specific functions through the Classic View interface.

10. Retiring Support for Internet Explorer 10 and Windows 7

    -In this release, we’ll be officially retiring Internet Explorer 10 and Windows 7 support for Webex Meetings. While users on these platforms won’t be prevented from joining or starting meetings, Cisco will no longer provide bug fixes or updates for this operating system and browser going forward.

11. Additional Virtual Background Preset Images

    -We've added more virtual background images to choose from in your Meetings and Events. The total number of available images has been increased from three to nine.

12. Virtual Background Support on Dual-Core Macs

    -The virtual background feature is now supported on Macs with dual-core processors.


-- Cisco Webex: Shawn Thiele