In line with the defined focus on innovation delivery demonstrated this year, Cisco has, through its annual Webex One event announced significant new features across its Webex ecosystem, the industry’s first and most comprehensive end-to-end hybrid work solution.
Here are 10 of the coolest features announced last week:
* Webex’s optimise for all voices feature equalises voices to ensure all participants can be heard, regardless of how far they are from a conference phone device. Speaker selectivity now also differentiates intended speech from background noise to remove distracting sounds.
* New Webex Collaboration Insights features help teams combat common workforce fatigue and empower personal well-being. Connections keeps track of the top 10 people users collaborated with weekly, new titles and locations of colleagues, and more. Well-being and Cohesion features in Personal Insights give teams an anonymous view into work time patterns, sentiment ratings and focus time goals. A manager, for example, can see a spike in team members working late in the evening and low rankings, and proactively address how to alleviate this.
* Webex Suite customers now have access to Thrive Reset, a feature based on research showing that it takes 60 to 90 seconds to course-correct from stress. People using Webex can download pre-loaded Resets on a range of topics or upload personal photos to help them focus on breathing, reflect on what they’re grateful for, reframe problems, or simply stand up and stretch.
* Only 48% of participants on average speak in meetings (source: Cisco Hybrid Work Index). As workers straddle time zones and balance meeting overload, asynchronous communication like Vidcast provides the ability to record, watch, comment and react at their own pace. Vidcast’s beta is now open to the public at vidcast.io and is projected to be integrated in the Webex App in Spring 2022.
* New to People Focus camera capabilities, available in December, will provide better clarity and optimised visuals of in-room attendees’ facial gestures and body language. Webex device camera intelligence enhancements in early 2022 are expected to further improve the view of people in meeting rooms, including showing conference room participants in individual boxes onscreen, regardless of meeting service.
* The new Webex Desk Mini enables workers to easily create a workspace anywhere. It features a 15,6-inch interactive 1080p display, 64-degree HD camera, full-range speaker and background noise removal mic array.
* Webex Whiteboarding enables users to create, find, edit and share whiteboards with anybody – including people outside of your organisation–using any device mobile, tablet, laptop, or any touch-enabled Webex devices, including the new Webex Board Pro.
* Following the acquisitions of Socio Labs and Slido, Cisco is unveiling an expanded Webex Events portfolio to help organisations power hybrid events of all types and sizes – from webinars to multisession events and conferences. Hybrid event management capabilities, including badging and printing for ticketing, monetisation and networking are now available. Customers can host up to 10K attendees in webinar mode and 100K in webcast mode via Webex Webinars. Integration of Slido’s polling, quizzing and Q&A technology in Webex Events increases attendee interactivity and engagement.
* Only Webex Events offers the ability for hosts of multi-language meetings or events to schedule an unlimited amount of language channels with multiple interpreters. Participants can select their preferred language once they join.
* Flexible and secure workflows to collaborate from anywhere with interoperability with Zoom, Microsoft and Google, embedded apps that enable continuous workflows and Cisco Meraki Insight and ThousandEyes, which help IT teams proactively protect the Webex collaboration experience.
Jeetu Patel, executive vice-president and GM of Cisco Security and Collaboration, says: “Technology has many powers, and the greatest of all is its ability to connect people and level the playing field for so many across the globe.
“Our new Webex innovations mark a significant step forward in helping our customers unlock the potential of their hybrid workforces – enabling them to collaborate in new ways and drive inclusive experience.”