Webex is all you need for design work and video conferencing. Let s check him out.

In one place we have fast communication in the team, the option of rapid organization of video conferences, sharing content, working on an interactive whiteboard and integration with the company calendar. We are connected to one ecosystem that "simply works". We share presentations, links, recordings and transcripts.

"Home-office" and "digital-first" are no longer empty slogans that HR departments used to boast when recruiting. This is a new reality in which we suddenly live. There has long been strong competition on the market among remote work software. Scattered teams have had the opportunity to cooperate, connect on "calls" or send statuses using project management software for years. So far it was only in theory, because practice is something completely different. The boss usually preferred to keep watch over employees all the time and to have fast access to the conversation in 4 eyes.

Covid changed the rules of the game

The virus is not discussed. We had to comply with it, but everything seems to indicate that the changes are permanent. How to maintain productivity in such an environment? How to choose the best tools to support your work? How to automate so that you do not have to spend time on tedious activities, but at the same time take care of online security?

To answer all these questions I decided to take a closer look at Webex from Cisco, which is not only a platform for video conferencing, but the entire ecosystem that drives remote work.

I have been on Webex for almost three years

During this time I managed to get to know Webex Meetings well. I usually use the application on my computer, but you can also join the meeting by clicking on the link without installing any software.

The most important tasks are: easy planning and quick start of the meeting.

I send a meeting link to colleagues. I like to organize meetings in my personal video meeting room. He has a fixed, unchanged url.

Then I click on the green "start meeting" button, turn on the cam and microphone. And now Instead of a long chain of emails, I can quickly discuss the project.

How do you hear me?

It's practically a meme. I remember myself, when every meeting from Skype or Skype for business times began with the sacramental question about the quality of voice connection. For some reason, the gods of video conferencing have never been favorable to me and a few minutes of the meeting flew in search of the right source setting.

It was not difficult then to conclude that meetings could be more effective. Now they must - we have no other choice. Unfortunately, the average meeting still needs 10 minutes to start for good. Fortunately, I've been avoiding these problems for three years. Recognizing the correct device and configuring the connection works as expected. At hand I have all the necessary buttons to mute guests or control the window, which I just want to share.

To connect on Webex we also do not need any additional plugin, because you can connect directly from the browser.

How to make meetings more effective?

Seamless connectivity, however, is just the beginning of the challenges. After all, the videoconferencing platform will not make us achieve our goals - it's just a tool. Webex, however, still has a few aces up his sleeve. Let's start with the most obvious: we have chat rooms where we can talk privately or with the whole group, as well as the ability to record sessions.

The screen sharing option works great. It saved my skin several times when I had to configure a tool. It is faster to observe when someone maneuvers your cursor than to follow his commands in an unknown ecosystem.

Taking notes seems to be the most important thing during meetings. And in such a way that everyone knows what is being discussed and what decisions have been made. Thanks to this, all participants during the meeting can make sure that they understand these tasks well and intervene if something is misunderstood. We can keep notes privately as well as publicly, sharing them on an ongoing basis with participants. We can also probe these by using the voting function. For my projects I often use this option when I need to make a quick decision and everyone has to express their opinion.

Work happens outside of meetings

It is said that if you want to do nothing throughout the day, then you should fill it with conversations with colleagues. As in every corpo-saying, here we also have a grain of truth. You have to take care of booking part of the day for moments of deeper focus and checking the progress of the project. And here team support tools such as Webex Teams work well.

Webex Teams can act as the fastest form of communication. Replaces Slack or Skype for Business. So we can create our own chats and channels, attach files, store links or directly paste screenshots (the latter was solved especially ingeniously - with one click).

You also need to organize brainstorming remotely, during which you can use boards to sketch or stick notes with your ideas - just like you did in a real conference room and devised a marketing strategy for the client.

How to conduct webinars and trainings?

Video conferences are just the beginning. After all, not only cells inside the organization, but entire large organizations as well as training companies move to the network. Previously, you could gather dozens of people in one room and explain the basics of SQL or Photoshop to them, but now all educational effort is focused on remote content delivery.

Here, Webex Training comes with help, i.e. a platform through which you can reach up to a thousand people with your message at the same time. Then we can not only share content, but also divide participants into smaller teams for group work or administering question and answer sessions. The package includes activity tracking, feedback, chat or voting.

Online conference? Is it possible?

More - it is already happening here. Microsoft, Apple or Google organized their conferences online, followed by smaller companies that still want to stay in touch with their developers or clients and build engagement.

Webex Events will certainly come to the rescue, where you can gather 3,000 people, or Webex Webcasting, which can accommodate up to 40,000 people watching simultaneously. We will most likely have to get used to the fact that it is called new normality. Imagining tens of thousands of people crammed into a limited space defies common sense today. No country will probably allow this in the near future, remembering the cases from Italy, where the pandemic spread throughout the country, including through a football match and his audience.

We work mobile

If you work in IT, informing you about the possibility of mobile work brings to mind the beginning of the decade. Regardless of whether we are in the office or at home, we use phones and tablets. Sometimes it is more convenient to just sit on the couch with the phone and connect with the team to get a break from sitting at the desk.

I practice it very often myself, so my colleagues know not only "my office" but also the salon. Using a variety of tools on my phone, I often felt like a second-class citizen who must accept the reduced functionality of the application. However, I have not experienced anything like this on Webex, where while dialing from the phone we still have access to exactly the same functions as in the desktop application. And not only on Webex Meetings and also Webex Teams - regardless of whether we are talking about iOS or Android.

Cisco Webex is No. 1 in Gartner's Magic Square for online meetings, but will also work in private applications.

In September, Gartner published his study of videoconferencing platforms. Cisco was rated the highest in terms of both tool efficiency and application possibilities. It has overtaken such competitors as Zoom, Teams, BlueJeans and Hangouts. My personal experience absolutely confirms these results - I have tested all of the above tools myself.

Source: Cisco blog .

And in addition, Webex can be free to use at home and we can connect with up to a hundred people at once. The version for small teams is $ 13.5 per month per person. Then we have access to the entire spectrum of facilities from recording and cloud storage, through whiteboards, integration with other applications, to participant management and support in case of problems.

On the other hand, companies can test Webex for up to 90 days for free and all four tools: Meetings, Teams, Trainings and Events - the entire ecosystem. The Warsaw company Atende, which ate teeth on Webex, helps launch the tests. In my opinion, the main strength of this offer is that I do not have to switch between applications and wonder if the whole thing will explode. And this is what we expect from IT solutions - to be an invisible tool that allows for more effective work.

  * The partner of the material is Cisco, as well as Atende - a Warsaw-based IT solutions integrator, whose new office we visited last year .

Webex is all you need for design work and video conferencing. Let's check him out.