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Know your limits with Webex Teams, and it will treat you well
August 09, 2019

Know your limits with Webex Teams, and it will treat you well

Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Cisco Webex Teams (formerly Cisco Spark)

We are using Webex Teams to host distributed meetings for staff and to hold distance learning classes at our university. Instructors have begun to teach hybrid classes where part of the student group can connect to the classroom remotely. A small portion of our users are still using other products such as Adobe Connect for specific use cases. However, the majority of our users are starting to use Webex for their meetings when a simple room to room call will not be sufficient.
  • Shared content is important for remote classes and is transmitted across Webex Teams well at a high resolution.
  • It is easy to quickly make a new space and add the desired users for breakout room use.
  • We often SIP dial into our Teams spaces with room endpoints such as the SX80 and this works well to include remote students into the lesson.
  • Teams doesn't give the instructor a lot of control of the class space. They can kick a member out of the space but there is currently no way to lock features out. We would like to be able to prevent remote students from sharing their screens or other content without requesting permission first.
  • The Teams software is sometimes difficult to get working for all students. We usually need to spend time in the first class of the semester troubleshooting audio issues or the inability of some students to see the video stream.
  • The usual issues that affect any cloud-based service occur here also. Sometimes a meeting will have low-resolution video or poor audio. These usually seem to be restricted bandwidth situations.
  • Dedicated support was added to answer Webex and other video conferencing tickets.
  • Remote classes became more feasible without requiring students to meet at specific locations. This has increased enrollment in hybrid and distance type classes.
  • Personnel now have a common conference software to hold meetings on that they have become familiar with. Individual departments are becoming less fractured.
Webex Teams is easy to figure out for a new user and minimal instruction is needed to get a user connected to a meeting. The calendar integration keeps all interactions inside a single window and all they need to know is to click the green Join button. Unfortunately when a problem occurs there is little feedback to the user and more in-depth troubleshooting is needed. Fixes may require deleting cache folders, reinstalling the software, or calls to customer support. Most of the issues we see are failures to connect to audio or video. Audio can be worked around with a phone call but video issues are often perplexing.
Cisco support is usually easy to work with and the users that have contacted support have reported positive experiences. I generally work directly with a Cisco representative and they show a willingness to help and can usually help or point me in the correct direction.
Webex Teams is a good trade-off of features and ease of use. When compared to Slack, the licensing fees are better when you have a large number of users. The chat and video call features are similar to Webex Teams feeling like a more mature product.
We still have an Adobe Connect cluster on-site to handle a few unique cases where it is more useful. With it being handled on-site we need a team to manage it and deal with its peculiarities such as difficulty restarting the service after Windows Updates. Webex Teams lets us avoid the software management side of things and the maintenance window is usually late enough to not affect us.
We also use Webex Meetings for our larger meetings and at times when strict control over a class/meeting is needed. There isn't much to contrast here as they are similar products with a different interface. I would recommend having both Teams and Meetings to use when the situation calls for it.
Webex Teams works well for small to medium-sized meetings where the participants are equals in the conversation. All users have equal control over the meeting features and can quickly share content with each other. Since users can mute and unmute themselves it is difficult for a room moderator to keep control over uncooperative members. As a meeting grows in size, it is more likely that you would need to use Webex Meeting or a Webex Event to keep control of the situation.