New release of Webex RoomOS: The power of Webex Meetings & Conference Devices

I’m Juan Gallardo, Product Manager for Room OS, the software that runs on our Cisco Webex Collaboration Devices. With this new blog series, I will be sharing all our exciting new features with you, and opening a communication channel with our users. I hope you enjoy it and provide as much feedback as possible.

The Webex Meetings experience becomes even better when combined with Webex devices. Joining a Webex meeting from a Webex device gives you the best video and audio quality you can experience on the market.  In the March 2019 release, we have therefore focused on unleashing the power of the platform, giving you more flexibility when meetings and apps come together as one Webex.

Whiteboarding

The Webex Board is a great all-in-one collaboration tool. You can make video calls, share content wirelessly, express your ideas on a blank whiteboard canvas, and annotate on top of your shared content. We are now making it possible for you to share your creative ideas with everyone in the meeting. In this release, anyone using Webex Meetings can view whiteboarding content from a Webex Board. So, whether you join from a Webex device, a 3^rdparty device, a laptop or a mobile phone, you’ll be able to see the shared content.

Content Sharing

Users shouldn’t need to know if the conference device in the meeting room is registered to the Cloud, or on-premises in order to know which client they should use to share. We are now enabling the ability to share wirelessly out of the call to any device through Webex Teams and Webex Meetings apps– regardless of where they are registered.

Just enter the room, open your laptop, launch your preferred client, and start sharing in your local meeting. Easy, right?

Wireless sharing of video with audio is also now supported on cloud systems, so Webex Teams users connected to a cloud-registered Webex device can share videos, animations, and any dynamic video and audio content to remote sites.

Webex Events Support

Webex Events lets you easily host events and webinars for several thousand attendees at the same time, and what better than combining this experience with powerful Webex devices? Imagine using Cisco’s speaker tracking technology or using some advanced configuration in a customized meeting room while speaking in a Webex Event. That is what we are making available on this release. Speakers and panelists can log into the Webex Event using a Cisco Webex device and enjoy any of these wonderful experiences created by the hardware and software combination that only Cisco provides in this area.

Cognitive Collaboration

Artificial intelligence is quickly changing our lives and the way we work.

Artificial intelligence and machine learning removes mundane tasks, increases meeting efficiency and builds more meaningful relationships. Webex Assistant is one of the first iterations of what we can do when we pair AI and Webex devices. Using this new feature, users can control room devices by simply using their voice. Just say “Ok Webex” and the system wakes up and waits for your command. Users can then join scheduled meetings, call someone in the directory, join personal rooms, or even adjust some device controls like volume! And this is just the beginning of many ideas we are cooking in our R&D department.

Device Analytics

You may have heard about what we are doing with analytics and our conference devices. Our friends on the Webex Teams App side had a great blog post around this a few weeks back. You may want to go and check what they are doing there.

Providing information on how Webex devices are been used is something that our friends in the IT department have been asking for a long time. This information can be used to take intelligent decisions around adding, removing, or changing devices in different rooms based on some actual data. The information is available through Cisco’s Control Hub, where you can find interactive charts that allow you to filter on a specific device type, utilization, etc., everything to provide admins a better perspective of what’s happening in their meeting rooms.

Remember, RoomOS is getting updated quite often, and we are excited about creating these new experiences for you. We will do our best to keep you up-to-date with what’s new so you can enjoy all the fantastic new features we want to create and make your meeting each day better! I would love to hear your feedback below.