Tag: WebEx

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Webex Contact Center now certified for Microsoft Teams

Bread with Teams and Cisco Logo

Webex Contact Center is an Enterprise Class CCaaS solution that enables skill-based routing of inbound “call centre” type calls and is designed to provide a seamless end-to-end customer service experience across voice, chat, email, and social media channels.

The big news this week is that Cisco Webex Contact Centre has just received office Microsoft Teams certification.

This is great for organisations, Microsoft, Cisco, and solution partners.

Great for Organisations

The Webex Contact Center Integration for Microsoft Teams combines rich omni-channel customer engagement capabilities with Microsoft Teams to break down barriers between contact center agents and the enterprise.

Whilst the CCaaS space in Teams is already quite well served by other vendors such as Luware, Anywhere 365, and Enghouse, Cisco Webex Contact Centre is a true Enterprise Class Contact Centre, trusted by many of the world largest enterprise organisations including EasyJet for example.

Some organisations who have been keen to fully embrace the potential of Microsoft Teams have often found themselves compromising on alternative “certified” CCaaS platforms. They can now have the best of both in a fully supported environment.

Great for Microsoft

In short this helps them protect their install base, since Microsoft certainly does not want to see their competition like Zoom, RingCentral, or Google muscle into their accounts base on the strength of their CCaaS offerings. By working with Cisco (as they are also doing in the Meeting Room space) they can now work more strategically together since Cisco and Microsoft already share around 90% of the same customer base.!

  • Adds a truly enterprise class CCaaS platform into the Teams ecosystem
  • Will further strengthen the partnership and collaboration between Microsoft and Cisco, the two leading technology companies that offer complementary solutions increasing the overall value proposition to their shared customer base.
  • Helps Microsoft expands the market reach of Microsoft Teams, which is already boasts more than with 280 million monthly users without (less) fear of losing market share to Cisco.
  • For organisations who require the best CCaaS solutions without compromising or mixing their collaboration and productivity tools, they leverage Cisco Webex Contact Centre without disrupting the flow of work for loyal Teams users with a seamless and integrated CCaaS solution from Cisco.

Great for Cisco

For Cisco this enables them to compete less and instead offer enterprise CCaaS services to their existing customer base who have been migrating or plan to migrate their UC platform to Microsoft Teams. Rather than risk losing out on the Contact Centre solution, Cisco can now meet their customers on their “turf“, providing the Contact Centre and CX solutions their customers need on their collaboration and productivity platform of choice whether that is Webex or Microsoft Teams.

Great for Microsoft and Cisco Partners

OK, so a little plug here for Cisilion (my employer), but for us (and therefore for me personally) I am excited about this because this brings an immense opportunity for Cisilion to leverage our unique position in our Cisco and Microsoft partnerships expertise and capability which will hugely benefit the services and solutions we can deliver to our clients.

  • As a Microsoft Teams specialist partner and Cisco Master Collaboration partner in the we are now empowered to deliver the best in enterprise CCaaS solutions to our customers alongside their choice of wider collaboration and productivity tools whether that is Cisco CUCM, Cisco Webex, or Microsoft Teams.
  • It helps us to attract and retain customers who are looking for a seamless and reliable customer service experience across multiple channels without having to shift partner due to technology choice changes.
  • It enables us to strengthen our deep partnerships and experience with enterprise class calling, meetings, platform and contact centres solutions across the two leading trusted technology providers.
  • Extends our ability to provide end-to-end design, implementation, integration, support and manged services across Cisco and Microsoft Collaboration solutions.
  • Enables us to provide cost and operational efficiencies both internally and to our customers.

Cisco Webex Contact Centre for Teams

The key outcomes that Webex CCaaS provides when integrated with Teams includes:

  • For the first time, brings a Unified calling platform between Cisco Webex Contact Centre and the organisations Microsoft Teams environment.
  • Allows for improved cross-function collaboration, knowledge sharing, and Customer Experience reporting among agents, supervisors, and other Teams users.
  • Advanced intelligent skill-based routing and queuing, which means customers can reach the right agent faster and more efficiently.
  • Providing a full and seamless customer service experience across voice, chat, email, and social media channels.
  • Delivers the core functionalities that high-performing multi-disciplined customer service teams require, such as call recording, voicemail, auto attendant, intelligent AI powered chat services, call back and rich social media integration.
  • Includes next-generation end-to-end Cisco security for Enterprise Class data protection and privacy in combination with that provided across the Microsoft 365 Security suite.
  • Brings exceptional management and supervisory controls and actional insights over “customer call handling”, with features like call analytics, call quality management, sentiment analysis, call control and full customer Lifecycle management.

Find out more

For more information about the announcement please see the following links.

Microsoft Announcement

Cisco Webex Contact Centre

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What was new to Teams and Webex in Feb 2022

Logo showing what is new to Teams and Webex in Feb 2022

Following on from a packed January of new features, the slew of updates and enhancements  to Microsoft Teams and Cisco Webex isn’t slowing down. Here’s my pick of the new features for Feb 2022 across the two big collaboration, meetings and calling platforms.

Microsoft Teams

Like most of the platforms, focus in Feb would adding some love to existing features and enhancing others. Main ones include enhancing the hybrid meeting experience, big updates to Teams Room devices on Android and bringing intelligence and convenience settings to physical meetings with the new “knock knock features”.

General Updates and New Features

Mute Notifications in Meetings

Subtle but vital, it’s now possible to mute notifications during meetings, so you can better focus. In addition to this, you can also now see the user’s “local time” allowing you to be more considerate of your colleague’s/customers/partners availability. Finally, the last general feature to hit the general release is the ability to pin chat messages, change chat density, and also respond to group approvals requests within Teams Approvals.

Meeting Experiences

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New mobile meeting experiences on iOS

In line with what was already supported on Android, it’s now also possible to join a Teams meeting with a single tap on both your Apple iOS device and Microsoft Teams Rooms using the companion feature. With this feature on, audio on your device will be automatically turned off to ensure echo does not happen. The “landing” experience on your iOS device will be optimised for engagement activities to make it easier to raise a hand or react, chat, see all participants, and access Microsoft Whiteboard. In addition to simply joining a meeting, Microsoft have also made it easy to access meeting and device controls, which includes the ability to cast a PowerPoint, control room cameras and more.

Microsoft have also made it possible to pin to the meeting stage or hide your own video in meetings. This allows you to see your own video in the increased size on your screen or to hide your own video (for you) during a meetings. This is designed to reduce distractions during calls and meetings while still having your video available for other participants to see. This is done by clicking on the ellipsis (…) in your video feed and selecting Pin for me or Hide for me.

Pin or Hide Video.png

Word Cloud Poll – adds support for open-text question polls in Teams meetings.
When using polls in meetings, this new option is great for more open engagement with attendees, since it allows you to collect attendees’ open-ended responses before, during, or after a meeting, with the results being automatically aggregated and displayed as a word cloud.

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“Word Cloud” Poll

Teams Walkie Talkie on Phones

Microsoft added the addition of Walkie Talkie function already available on mobile, to Teams phones devices which allows users to use instant push to talk to speak to colleagues or other departments. Walkie Talkie on Teams phone devices can only be used to communicate with colleagues that are part of the same Teams channel so think of it like a silo’d communications group. Walkie Talkie can be added to the App Set up Policy and assigned to Teams Phones devices from the Teams admin center.

New to Teams Devices

Teams Rooms, can now be configure to automatically release reserved conference rooms that are not being used. In addition there is also a new featured known as a “check-in knock-knock” notification on the Teams Room front room display, which will alert over-running meeting dwellers that their meeting is over and people are waiting to come into the room.

Microsoft also more added support for content sharing on Teams Rooms for Android, as well as increasing the number of video feeds displayed. HDMI ingest sharing, also makes it way to more Android Room devices as does far-end camera control for remote meeting attendees. Android Teams Room devices also now support adaptive dual screen display whereby the videos of remote participants span both screens (in meeting rooms with dual screens) when content is not being shared.

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Teams Rooms on Android
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HDMI Ingest on Android Rooms

Cisco Webex

Updated to Webex are also coming thick and fast and Feb 2022 is all focussed on innovations that make hybrid work even better. In Feb’s updates, these including voice optimisations for all voices, a new Webex App integration within HubSpot (which joins app integrations from Zoom and Teams), new Socio capabilities that aim to unify the physical and virtual event experiences. There’s also welcomed changes to Cisco’s flagship Room Panorama devices.

New “All voices” audio optimisation

Aimed to “give all meeting attendees an equal voice”, Webex has added “optimise for all voices” to their intelligent audio capability. This enhancement will allow users to be able to hear anyone in the meeting, no matter where they are in the room at the same volume level. For example, if there are a few people sitting away from the microphone, their voices will still be heard loud and clear by all remote meeting participants.

Realtime translation and transcription expanded with 13 new languages

Webex now makes it easier to create a more inclusive, collaborative and accessible experience in meetings and webinars with attendees from around the world, as well as those with hearing disabilities, with real-time translation. This month Webex have added 13 new spoken languages taking the total to over 100 caption languages in the Webex app.

Webex Live Captions and Translation

Redesigned Sildo “poll” experience

Cisco released a redesigned Slido experience in meetings to make it easier to create engaging real-time polls, quizzes, and also to host Q&As. Silo was integrated into Webex last year following an acquisition and provides a simple to use, adaptive and extensive experience.

Cisco Slido Polls in Webex

Webex Room Panorama

Aimed to bridge the gap between hyrid meeting experiences, Cisco Webex can now bring a full immersive experience with panoramic view to cloud registered Webex Room Panorama devices. Webex now supports up to 9 point-to-point calls with exceptional live video feed of far end participants, including control of remote meeting rooms, on the two 82” screens which make up the Panorama. Shared content is displayed on the 65” top screen.

Cisco Webex Room Panorama

Room Panorama features directional, stereo audio, intelligent table microphone array, HD content sharing to provide even more flexibility, better replicate in-person experiences, and to bring the full panoramic experience to boardrooms and executive meetings rooms.

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Cisco Webex will soon let employees connect their Webex Cloud Calling number to their mobile number.

Cisco has annouced a new upcoming enhancement to their Webex Calling platform that extends phone numbers natively to a employees mobile phone allowing them to use the phones keypad rather than the Webex mobile app.

You can read the official annoucement here. https://blog.webex.com/hybrid-work/next-gen-business-calling-built-for-hybrid-work/

Our innovations released today enable enterprises to be closer to their customers than ever, helping them deliver the best possible customer experience across all channels in real-time.

Jeetu Patel |General manager |Cisco Security & Collaboration

True Single Number Reach

Unlike traditional Single Number Reach service available in Cisco Call Manager and other Softphone services which essentially forward your call to a mobile, Webex Go, allows employees to connect over their mobile network (using their work number) while keeping their personal mobile number hidden. 

A step forward for communication Compliance?

CSOs and CCOs will most likley be interested by this annoucement since, as well as the convenience factor for employees, will help businesses ensure employees adhere by thier compliance and regulatory rules since they can ensure calls go via Webex and are then recorded and monitored for example.

Coming in H1 2022

Cisco said in the annoucement that Webex Go is expected to launch in the US in the first half of 2022, with other geo regions coming at somepoint  in the future.

What about similar services?

Vendors such as Avaya have had a similar function for a while and there are also a number of value added SIP and Mobile providers who offer value added service which provide a similar service.

One such provider (yes a bit of a call out here) is Teleware 365 and their Re:Call service.

Teleware 365 Re:Call Service

Re:Call enables employees to use their personal mobile phone to make and receive business calls, SMS, IM and group chat. This improves the employee experience as it removes the need for a business phone entirely, giving employees the ability to use their own device, the device they already know and love. Its also great in environments that need to adhere to strict communication compliance since it can ensure all calls are logged and recorded.

Hybrid Working in driving innovation

It’s good to see Cisco announcing that they will bringing native mobile extensibility directly (without the need for an app) right into Cisco Webex Calling next calendar year.

It’s pretty much accepted now that the future of work (for most) is hybrid and as such organisations are becoming increasingly focused on ensuring a seamless experience between remote working, the office and of course the experience, security and governance around using personal and work phones/numbers. The typical ask I see is.


• Removing the need for employees to carry two phones, one for personal use and one for business use. This is also good for Corporate Social Responsibility.

• Allowing employees to use their phone of choice without having to have IT control it.

• Allowing employees to separate business and personal use of the phone, providing confidentiality for business and personal data alike with full accountability and control.

• Allows employees to collaborate safely and securely with instant messaging and group chat.

I expect the other leading collaboration vendors like Zoom and Microsoft Teams to follow in the future and in the mean time, service providers like Teleware 365 can provide similar functionality regardless of what UC or voice solution you use.

Welcome your comments as always about this or anything in my blogs and thoughts…

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Cisco unveil new Webex logo, new look and add a bunch of new features

Summary

Last night, Cisco unveiled a new “modern” logo for its Webex product suite along with annoucing a new set of features coming soon which range from background noise cancellation to adding polls and quizzes to make meetings more interactive.

The video Conferencing race continues as the leaders of the pack, Microsoft Teams, Webex and Zoom and Google Meet continue to see steady usage growth fueled initially by coronavirus pandemic which has now transformed into most beleive will be a longer term seismic shift to hybrid / home and office working and learning post pandemic as the world’s largest working from experiment has proved (for many) the effectiveness of home working and improved life balance achieved by ditching the daily commute.

New Webex logo

The new Webex Suite

Cisco, which also unveiled a new Webex logo, said its new hybrid work “suite” is circa 40% to buy when brought together compared to the individual components as you’d expect.

The new Webex Suite

In their blog, Cisco said they had subtly added almost 800 new features and devices since September last year to enhance the customer experience across meetings, calling, messaging, and event management specifically to address the long term needs of hybrid work which are very different from a pure remote work model.

Top new features

There was a handful of notible new features announced following a series of acquisitions over the past few months which Cisco are now ready to start baking into their new suite.

In December 2020, Cisco’s acquired Slido, and audience engagement tool with capabilities which include Q&A, polling, trivia, and gamification.

Last month, Cisco then acquired Socio Labs, an event technology platform for live, large-scale events and webinars.

Another new feature aims to more intelligently frame and reframe the speaker or most active meeting participants using machine learning and AI technology to allow the audience to better see body language and facial expressions in meetings – something more easily missed in remote/online meetings.

These new tools which will being Cisco up to or ahead of their competition, (in the case of Slido), are designed to make Webex better suited for the future of meetings and events of all sizes, including large “hybrid” events that combine in-person and virtual attendance, something all the major conferencing venues and hosts need to get right.

New logo, new look

The new webex suite comes with new fresh and dynamic look (which accompanies its new logo) which Cisco says better reflects the products values and initiatives.

The new Webex (image (C) Cisco)

Jeetu Patel, Cisco’s SVP and GM Security and Collaboration was quoted saying to Zdnet “We are unmistakably committed to inclusivity and making sure everyone has an equal voice and an equal seat at the table, no matter where the table is,”

Price “enhancements” too

Cisco said that the new Webex Suite will cost around 40% less than buying the individual components and services a-la-carte.

This is of course expected, with any suite of products but good to see and of course customers can save even more money by replacing legacy tools or disconnected services and platforms with tools from the Webex suite.

Read more?

You can read more and try this out by visiting the cisco blogs here..

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Cisco Live 2020: “To power an inclusive future for all”

The Cisco Live 2020 keynote yesterday (June 16 2020) followed the same theme as many of the other leading tech vendor events and focussed primarily on the current social and economic climate brought about by the global COVID19 pandemic before touches on new Cisco Webex and Cisco SecureX features which were the core focus of announcements on day 1.

Key Priorities Announced

“Possibilities” was the main theme of the keynote on Tuesday 16th June, in which Chuck Robbins summarised the current climate and demand on technology as the need to reimagine applications, secure data, transform traditional network and data centre infrastructure, and the “empowering” of teams through technology as being more important now than ever. which namely allowed Cisco to ire-introduce and emphasise some of the new core features coming to their Webex and SecureX platforms. 

Outside of this, most of the keynote didn’t focus on new announcements, but openly discussed the chaos that #Covid19 has thrown on the world nicely introducing the keynotes’ main theme – simple “Possibilities”. 

“2020 has been a difficult and challenging year,”, “We started out with a new decade with hope, and we never imagined that in June we would have experienced what we’ve experienced this year.” Chuck Robbins, Cisco Live 2020

Chuck Robbins went on to talk about the combination of the COVID19 pandemic, and the fundamental change to business, employees and how we work, combined with the urgency, rapid change in direction and crazy tasks that every organisation has been faced with ensuring the technology, people and business can function from home which has of course been a challenge for many organisations globally. 

“One of those big challenges included shifting office workers to a remote work style. This stark change, on top of all of the exterior issues, has taken a toll–both on the enterprise and individuals.” Chuck Robbins, Cisco Live 2020

Additions to Webex and SecureX

Javed Khan, VP of collaboration at Cisco, was next on the virtual stage joined by Gee Rittenhouse, senior VP at Cisco, to discuss some of the new features being added to their WebEx and SecureX platforms.

Webex 

With so many people working from home now and for the foreseeable future due to #COVID19, video and web conferencing use has skyrocketed across all major platforms, namely Zoom, Microsoft Teams and of course WebEx.

By April 2020, Cisco said they were seeing more than 25 billion meeting minutes a month (which was up nearly 3 fold  which is three times the size of the normal monthly average and said that “We have the unique opportunity to use our collaboration technology and our amazing people to help power an inclusive future for all.“

We already know the future of Webex (currently in preview) will bring an enhanced experience leveraging what Cisco have called “Cognitive Collaboration” which will deliver insights about upcoming meetings, contacts as well as information about your day to reduce the need to keep flicking between Webex and Outlook.

NewWebEx
New WebEx Preview interface

 

Next, Javed Khan formerly announced the addition of the Webex Assistant, a personal digital assistant that can be used within the WebEx platform to enable handsfree operation and event in meeting administration WebEx meetings. With the Webex Assistant, users can “ask” Webex to record the meeting, take notes, and even send highlights to attendees when the meeting has finished. 

Picture of Cisco WebEx Assistant

Security built in was another focus of WebEx improvement, with extended data loss prevention (DLP) retention, Legal Hold tools for chat and content which is also coming to Webex Meetings. Cisco also announced an expansion to their end-to-end encryption including AES 256 Bit encryption with GCM mode for increased protection for meeting data and resistance against tampering. Security around meetings has of course been very top of mind for many whereby Zoom have had their reputation dented over claims and fears of poor security across their platform. 

Cisco also announced the Webex Desk Pro – an “AI powered” collaboration device that features a 27-inch 4K display, 71-degree HD camera and digital whiteboarding which looks like a cross between a Surface Studio and a Cisco EX device.

Picture of a Cisco WebEx Desk Pro

Cisco said that they would be “doubling down on AI” and that they would be adding even more intelligence into their contact centre solutions, converting customer support agents into “super agents” to ensure that they always have all the all the right information at their fingertips to allow them to solving customer issues faster than ever.  Javed Khan said that the goal of Cisco Contact Centre platform is to “improved customer satisfaction and improved customer loyalty.”

It’s also very apparent that Cisco are going to be dropping the “Webex Teams” name and moving to “Webex App” or simply back to just “Webex” as part of their next update integrations. I think this is a good move as to be honest, customers got confused when Webex Teams simply got Teams, which, let’s face it, every assumed they meant Microsoft Teams!

SecureX Update

From a security perspective, another huge focus for Cisco, Gee Rittenhouse talked about some of the new optimised features within SecureX, which he called 
“the most comprehensive cloud native platform in the industry.”

Gee Rittenhouse continued his explanation of the SecureX platform, stating that “In one place, you can see your entire environment, threats and incidents, and resolve policy changes.” 

Cisco SecureX dashboard

This was followed by a quick demo in which Cisco illustrated how Cisco SecureX customers could directly see all the possible security threats across their network through a single view/dashboard.  They demo showed a “kill chain” explorer view whereby, upon clicking on a particular detected threat, the system generated a relationship graph so that the SecOp team can see everything related to that single threat along the ability to then block it across the organisation with a just couple of clicks. There is also some automation behind this allowing some auto remediation as you’d expect. 

Cisco said they have a huge and growing number of integration partners, and are sharing intelligence and threat protection details with other leading security vendors including Microsoft, McAfee, and many others

Summary

As you’d expect from Cisco – huge focus on collaboration and security which right now is top of mind as many organisations get ready for a quite different future for the time-being at least.

What did you think? Did you attend the conference? What were your key takeaways and what did I miss?

 

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