Cisco Webex Meetings 39.8 – Bringing speed and simplicity to video conferencing

Webex Meetings 39.8 is one of our most significant updates this year. The key update in this version will make it faster, easier and more intuitive for users – both existing and new – to join a Webex video conferencing meeting. In addition, 39.8 brings a host of features that will help users get more done using the tools they love, and give administrators ways to make managing Webex even easier. Webex Meetings 39.8 enhancements include:

• Fastest meeting join experience
• Deeper integration with Slack
• Set your own virtual background
• Richer annotation on mobile
• Advanced diagnostics

 Join Webex faster than ever

In version 39.8, we’ve made huge strides to make the join experience in Webex Meetings easier and faster than ever. It now takes fewer steps and just seconds to get into a meeting—for current and new users alike. The key changes include:

• The big green button debuts in the meeting invitation, designed to attract your attention for the easiest join experience ever. The meeting template also has a new clean aesthetic and has the same look and feel no matter how you join.
• The ability to select your audio and video preferences BEFORE you enter the meeting; preferences are saved to the desktop app, so it’s as few as one click the next time you join.
• For first-time users, the installation process is simple and intuitive; you get the pre- and in-meeting experience within a single download for a rich, full-featured experience – and no admin rights are required.

We hope you enjoy this new and improved Webex Meetings join experience. Please try it out and share your feedback with us.

 Experience the complete Webex Meetings lifecycle within Slack

With enhancements we’re enabling in version 39.8 and a few others introduced in the last couple of Webex Meetings updates, we’ve now fully enabled the entire meeting life cycle within Slack channels. With deeper integration than any other meetings solution, Slack users can:

• Schedule and see all of your Webex meetings
• Start and join your Webex meetings
• Connect your Outlook email calendarto your channel so you get reminders for upcoming meetings
• Get Webex status alertswhen your meeting has started—and see who is in your meeting
• If you recorded your meeting, you’ll automatically get a notificationand summary

So, you never have to leave Slack to have a great meeting experience with Webex.

Customize your background in iOS

This next 39.8 feature is one that has been high on our request list. By popular demand, you now have the ability to select a virtual background from two favorite stored backgrounds. This is helpful if you’re trying to cover up the beach or golf course where you’re taking your Webex meeting or if you’re trying to project a more professional environment. If you recall, we had a similar blurred background feature, which will continue to be supported. For now, this is only supported on iOS, but we are working to extend this feature to Android users and to the desktop app. 

Additionally, we are now supporting MacOS Catalina (version 10.15). Please note that in order to run Webex Meetings desktop app on Catalina, you must be on Webex Meetings 39.8.

Richer annotation on mobile

Update 39.8 now brings you rich annotation capabilities while video conferencing on your mobile device.Android users can now start a whiteboard session in Webex Meetings, which brings feature parity with iOS devices. In addition, both iOS and Android users have richer annotating capabilities, including the ability to:

• Select and move annotations
• Undo last annotation
• Move annotation when sharing a whiteboard, content, or screen from your mobile device
• Mute/unmute your audio while annotating

Advanced diagnostics for Webex Meetings in Control Hub

For administrators, greater insight into the environment of meeting participants can help with problem solving and resource allocation. Through Cisco Webex Control Hub, update 39.8 now gives clear visibility to:

• How each participant in the meeting joined by video device (the make and model of the hardware) or microphone speaker and camera type
• How they’re connected (Wi-Fi, Ethernet, cellular)
• Quality metrics, including resolution, bitrate, frame rate, packet loss, etc., updated every minute

With this rich insight through Control Hub, administrators have useful information at their fingertips to deliver better support and quality of service. With Webex Meetings and Control Hub, we are offering greater feature capability and granularity than any other vendor’s management system.

For more details about Webex Meetings version 39.8, please visit the Webex Help Portal – What’s New in Webex Meetings Suite (WBS39)– and click on “WBS39.8.”

If you haven’t already, try for free today.