Hi everyone today I want to show you all of the top new features in Cisco's WebEx Cisco has been investing heavily and luckily for you. That means there's lots of new functionality that you can start taking advantage of.
One app
New feature No.1➡ the Cisco WebEx app is now just one app in the past you had two separate apps, there was one for meetings and then a separate app for teams, and you had to jump back and forth between the two of them.
Now all of your calls messages and meetings all happen in one place in the new WebEx app here if you see my desktop I simply have one icon for WebEx, and when I launch it this will get me into all of my meetings and teams all in one place.
Remove background noise
New feature No.2➡ AWebEx includes some very impressive background noise cancellation.
And for this one I have my earplugs in because we're going to test
this out to see how it works. And I don't know about you but anytime I join a meeting and I look at my carpet or my rug and I see some fluff. I really have to clean it up.
So I've got my vacuum cleaner right here by the way Dyson amazing vacuum cleaner and let's test this out to see how it works so now as I'm talking if I want to vacuum up that fluff.
This is an extremely loud guest this would probably be disruptive to the call. Luckily WebEx can remove all of that noise to do it Let's head down to the microphone down here under audio options, click on the carrot and then let's click into settings within settings there's now a new option at the bottom here that says remove background sound. I'm going to turn on the microphone.
Wow, hopefully, background sound to see how it sounds. Wow, that's pretty impressive. It sounds like it pretty much removes the vacuum, even though it's going at full blast right now right next to me. All in all, that's pretty impressive background noise cancellation.
Hand gesture detection
New feature No.3➡ whether it's can automatically detect different hand gestures.
So let's say you're in a meeting and you want to maybe clap for someone maybe give him a thumbs up or maybe you don't like the presentation and you want to give it a thumbs down WebEx will detect that and help broadcast your gesture.
So how do we take advantage of this well down on the bottom there's an emoji icon or the reactions icon. When we click on this we see all the different reactions that we can send. Now you could click here and you could send a reaction or instead, you can simply do the gesture and it'll automatically send it for you to enable this down at the bottom there is a toggle we need to toggle that on. Once we toggle that on we see this rectangle around each of the different reactions that we can recreate. So let's test this out first off I can raise my hand if I have a question.
There you see WebEx detected that I raised my hand and now my hand is up. Maybe the presentation is good I like it let's give a little Golf Club over here just to show our appreciation and there and picked it up. Once again we can do the thumbs up or if you really don't like a point that the presenter makes you could also give it the thumbs down and WebEx also detects that you.
Participants can choose breakout rooms
New feature No.4➡ you can now let your attendees choose which breakout room they want to join and maybe let's take a step back first off what is a breakout room Well, here we are meeting in a larger session, maybe we want to go off and have a brainstorming session and everyone wants to move into a smaller group.
And once we finish our small group discussions we can rejoin the main session. Those are breakout rooms to enable breakout rooms down on the bottom, click on the ellipsis for more options, and then you can enable breakout sessions when you turn that on. This will open up a dialog over here and in the past you can have people automatically be assigned to one of the different sessions or breakout rooms.
You can also manually choose who goes to which room, but now there's a new option where you can give your participants some freedom and let them choose what session they want to join.
Artificial intelligence
New feature No.5➡ WebEx now includes some fairly impressive artificial intelligence capabilities. And now, don't worry.
The Terminator is not yet coming to get you the WebEx AI only has virtuous intentions, how do you use the WebEx AI well down here in the bottom left hand corner you see this pleasant looking icon. This is the WebEx AI.
So what can it do for you well first off, it can make your meetings, a lot more productive and efficient, and to start with that, it'll take notes or a transcript of your meeting. So here I'm going to unmute my microphone, and it's now listening to me so if you haven't already, I highly recommend subscribing to the Kevin YouTube channel, when I stopped talking over on the right hand side here you see who spoke, and then you also see a transcript of what that person said, and let's say this is a pretty important point from this meeting, so I can click on this text to highlight it and this will add it to the highlights.
So if anyone reads a transcript later on. They can also read this point and make sure that they subscribe to the Kevin Stratford YouTube channel, along with simply talking and getting a transcript of the conversation.
You can also let WebEx know when you make decisions and it'll automatically add it to the highlights. So as you're having your conversation if you say we made a decision for whatever WebEx we'll listen to that and it'll add it to a record for the conversation.
So why don't we test this out. I'm going to unmute and we just made the decision that you are going to subscribe to the Kevin Stratford YouTube channel. Now if I click over into the highlights tab here I see a highlight that the WebEx AI automatically created on my behalf. So what it did is it heard that we made a decision and it knows that when you make a decision well that's important. So it highlighted here in the notes.
Not only does it listen for decisions but it also listens if someone's gonna follow up with something if there's a due date. So basically the WebEx AI will hold you accountable. You can no longer say oh no I don't remember that from the meeting because the WebEx AI will remember it on your behalf.
You'll also see keywords that the WebEx AI listens for so once again we use the example with the decision.
Now you might be wondering, well, wow this WebEx AI is just gonna hold me accountable doesn't it have any fun, well down below. You can also get to know your WebEx assistant, for example, it can even tell you jokes. WebEx, tell me, a joke.
Down here you can see, because he used up all his cash. Oh wow. It's got a good sense of humor, what can I say.
Music mode
New feature No.6➡ WebEx now includes a music mode.
What does music mode mean and why would you ever use it?
Well maybe you want to play a nice song to your co workers but more realistically, maybe you're a music teacher and your students playing the piano and unfortunately it just doesn't sound that good, because the audio gets compressed so much.
So what can we do about that well let's turn on music mode to turn on music mode go down to the microphone icon on the bottom and let's click on the carrot icon.
Next, let's click on settings within settings there's now a new option at the bottom called music mode and by default is unchecked, to the right event there's an info icon and if you hover over it'll tell you what it does, but instead of reading that let's actually see how it works. So I'm going to play a song here and we'll turn music mode on and off to see what type of impact it has.
So have you heard that with music mode turned on, you get a little bit less compression and the music quality has a little bit more fidelity.
Dark theme in meetings
New feature No.7➡ WebEx now supports a dark theme in the meeting experience.
So, especially as it's getting late at night I have all this light chrome around the meeting experience and it starts to hurt my eyes after a while. Luckily, I can turn on dark theme to turn on dark theme let's go to the top menu bar and let's click on show menu bar. We now see all the different menus let's click on the one that says View, and within the View menu towards the bottom there's the option that says themes.
By default it's set to the light theme, we can also change it to the dark theme and finally, my eyes can get a break.
Floating panels during screen share
New feature No.8➡ , when I'm sharing my screen, the participant that chat and other panels now floats, so I can continue to monitor them as I'm sharing my screen here right now I'm sharing my program DaVinci Resolve when I hover over here I see all of my different screen sharing controls.
Now if I click on participants or if I click on chat. You see these panels appear I can place these anywhere I want on the screen, so I can continue to stay on top of the conversation or see who's joining and leaving the meeting, while I'm sharing my screen.
Simplified meeting controls
New feature No.9➡ the meeting experience has been cleaned up and down across the bottom here I have some of the most used controls here I can toggle my microphones muted on or off I can turn on or off my video I could share my screen.
So all these controls have been simplified and they're at the forefront. So I have easy access to them.
Edit profile & spaces themes
New feature No.10➡ you can now include a cover image, along with your profile. So what does this mean well when someone looks up your contact card.
Not only will they see your photo but they're also going to see a nice cover image, how do you set this up well let's go up to the profile picture in the top left hand corner. When you click on this, let's go down to the option that says Edit Profile within edit profile here at the top I see my profile picture and I see my contact card over on the left hand side.
Now, down below this is a new feature where I can choose my cover image, so I could go through and make my profile or contact card look a little bit friendlier now right now I can only choose from this pre selected group, however coming soon I'll also be able to upload my own custom background, not only can I edit the cover image for my personal profile, but I can also do it for my various spaces. Here's the New York flagship space for the Kevin cookie company and I'm currently in the general space.
If I click on this edit icon. This allows me to edit this base profile, down below here too. I can also choose a cover image, and once again coming soon I'll be able to upload my own custom background image. Speaking of customizing the experience.
New themes
New feature No.11➡ and you can now choose additional themes for your WebEx experience to select different themes go up to the profile picture in the top left hand corner and then let's go down to settings within settings over on the left hand side let's go down to the option that says appearance. Previously you had the option of going with the light theme or what's called the default theme, or you could select the dark theme, but now there are some additional themes.
They've now added the bronze theme the Jade theme and also the lavender theme, and as an extra bonus not only do you get them in light theme, but you also get a dark theme variation of all of those new themes,
Add URLs to spaces
New feature No.12➡ This is the last new feature of today. And before you cry and feel despair that this is in.
Keep in mind that WebEx is investing heavily and before you know it, there will be even more new features and you'll find another content like this, with feature number 12.
This is one of my favorite ones you can now add a URL to a space. Here I am within the general space for our New York flagship store up on the top tabs there's now an option to add a new tab let's click on this, when we click to add a new tab we can name the shortcut and we can also enter a website address let me go ahead and do that here I entered the Kevin cookie company and the Kevin cookie company.com.
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When I click on Add now this adds a new tab on top. So all of my employees with just one click, they can go to our homepage to see what the latest and greatest is with our cookie company.
All right. Well that was a quick look at all of the new functionality. If you found out some new things and you'll start taking advantage of please share this post to see more content like this in the future.
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