News and Announcements

Webex Site Upgrade to Version 43.1 - Jan. 9, 2023

Posted: 2023-01-10 09:07:17   Expiration: 2023-02-25 09:07:17

Disclaimer: This news item was originally posted on 2023-01-10 09:07:17. Its content may no longer be timely or accurate.

With this update comes improvements to recording capabilities, auto admit for signed in Webex users and ability for Webex Admins to reassign a host to scheduled meetings when a host has left the University.

Highlighted features for this update

  • Cohosts can record, view, and share cloud recording and support anyone can record

    We’re excited to announce that we’re going to allow cohosts and meeting participants to record a meeting in the cloud. This makes it easy to record a meeting if the host isn’t available or busy during the meeting. This has been a highly requested feature from users who mentioned that this makes the meetings less interruptive as any cohost or meeting participant can record the meeting.

    With this feature, cohosts or meeting participants can record the meeting and have the capabilities that a host to start, stop, or pause the recording. After the meeting ends, the recording is still owned by the host. However, the recording is shared automatically with the cohosts who are from within the organization.

  • Enhance meeting security with Auto Admit

    We’re excited to introduce Auto Admit that is designed to make your life easier as a meeting host while increasing the security of your meeting.

    New default behavior introduced with Auto Admit allows invitees who are signed into Webex to join a scheduled meeting directly without having to wait in the lobby. No more admitting people from the lobby when they were supposed to be in the meeting anyways!

    No passwords or PIN numbers required! Even Webex Room systems that you add to your meeting invite can join the meeting directly.

    Remind your invitees to sign into Webex to be able to take advantage of this amazing new usability improvement.

    For users who aren’t signed into Webex and those who aren’t on the invite, they continue to wait in the lobby until you or a cohost admits them.

    Important callouts:

    1. This feature doesn’t apply to Personal Room meetings.

    2. Settings for existing customers will be honored with this feature. For net new customers, lobby is the default setting.

    3. Allowing participants in your organization to always join unlocked meetings is now an admin level option that controls the behavior for all meetings in your organization. Users in your organization who aren’t invited to a meeting are no longer permitted to join unlocked meetings unless the new admin setting is enabled.

    4. Under our Advanced options for scheduled meetings, the behavior behind the following cohost settings has been modified to check for invitee status before assigning the cohost role.

      1. The first person to join the meeting who has a host account on the site becomes a cohost.

      2. All attendees who have host accounts on this site become cohosts when they join the meeting.

  • Stage manager in Webex Webinars

    Host and cohost can now give your webinar a professional and polished look by adding a background wallpaper and logo to the stage, customize the speakers’ name label with name and subtitles. You can set up the background, logo, and name labels in the information page before the webinar starts, or setup and do a last-minute check when you're in the webinar. Attendees only see the produced and customized stage when you sync the stage to everyone.

    Known issue:

    • Produced stage is shown to panelists and attendees in the Webex Meetings app. Produced stage can’t be shown on device, recording, or webcast view. These are coming in updates.

    • If the panelist uses the phone number provided by Join by phone to dial in directly, the name and subtitle that the host has setup for them based on their email isn’t applied to their phone number.


     
    This feature is available on a delayed release cycle. Check status.webex.com/maintenance to see when it’s available on your site.

In-meeting experience

Italian spoken language

Just like the existing English, French, German, and Spanish spoken languages, you know get Italian as an option. During the meeting, the host can select Italian as the spoken language for the meeting, which then appears in the closed captions and transcript.

Visual changes to the meeting preview window

We’ve updated the meeting preview window to make it easier to get into meetings. The window size has been changed to be smaller than the meeting window and not be expandable. This prevents users from thinking the preview window is the actual meeting window. We’ve also added a new tool tip to encourage users to click Join or Start meeting.

New End control button and keyboard shortcut when using remote control

We've made it easier to regain control when you've granted control of your screen or application share to someone else. We added a new End control button to the control bar at the top of the screen, and a new keyboard shortcut SHIFT+ALT+R. You can continue to double-click the mouse to regain control as well.

Stop share and pass control (to another user) are now in the More (…) menu.

Auto-switch camera setting in Windows

Windows users can choose from Preferences -> Video -> Camera -> Automatically select camera to enable or disable automatic camera switching when they connect a new external camera to their Windows computer.

By default, automatic camera switching is turned off (unchecked).

When users connect to the camera, they see a new camera notification.


 
This is already available for Mac users in 42.9.

Webinar experience

Pre-assign attendees to breakout sessions

Hosts and cohosts can now pre-assign attendees to breakout sessions from the webinar information page​.

Hosts can manually import a CSV file containing attendee information with a 'pre-assigned session name' column that creates and assigns attendees to their assigned BO sessions​. They can also automatically assign approved attendees to breakout sessions if registration is required.

Slido experience

Second poll flow

We added a Plus sign + button to continue adding multiple polls to your event from the Slido integration for more efficient event creation.

Mandatory field in survey

When you create a Survey (from Slido Administration or any integration sidebar), you can mark any questions as required. It’s then visible on participant mode. In At the end of the poll question, there’s a visible asterisk* and below the answer there’s an explanation of what the asterisk means*. If a user doesn’t respond to the required question, they see an error.

Open text topics in slidolabs

This feature helps achieve better meetings by providing instant context to the moderator. Filter responses in the open text poll by their topics. These are automatically generated for English responses and appear on present mode. Recommended for meetings with many participants.

Administration experience

Administrators can reassign a new host for scheduled meetings and Webinars

If a meeting host leaves the company, or moves to another group, then the host becomes invalid for their scheduled meetings. The administrators can reassign a new host for the scheduled meetings.

Administrators can search for the meeting using the original host’s email or meeting number, and then select to reassign a new host. The new host can manage the meetings. The direct benefit for the customers is to keep the original scheduling with new hosts, avoiding confusion to the attendees.

In the first phase, this feature supports both Meetings and Webinar scheduled from Webex meeting sites.

-- Cisco Webex: Shawn Thiele