Higher Ed Scenario
August 13, 2019

Higher Ed Scenario

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

Overall Satisfaction with Cisco Webex Teams (formerly Cisco Spark)

It's currently configured on a single user basis around the campus. Users who have a paid Webex Teams subscription also get hybrid services enabled. For these specific users, they have the ability to dial PSTN calls from the Webex Teams client. The voicemail service also comes from our on-prem Cisco Unity Voicemail server.
  • Calendaring integration.
  • One button to push (regardless of video conference vendor).
  • Threads and conversations.
  • Webex integration.
  • E911 location information for Hybrid Services.
  • Emergency Notifications for campus emergencies (similar to SingleWire InformaCast).
  • Native integration with other 3rd party Clients such as Slack and Microsoft Teams.
  • Provides a remote deployment option is a positive.
  • Negative in the sense that anyone can just sign up on our campus. Dial tone is typically managed by our team and when departments decide to go out and test this, they assume that calling clients are all supported by our team.
  • Conflicts with other clients such as Microsoft Teams users and Slack user.
From my perspective, I have been in the industry for many years and the client is pretty well put together. I didn't need to see any training material or have I had to engage any online threads for assistance on how to configure any of the settings. It's user-friendly basically.
One number to dial for support. It's not that hard.
Skype had its limitations and to support PSTN calls with not very intuitive. Slack is a beast. That's the reason why we have a campus agreement today. My central IT folks love it. Sure WebEX teams can do what Slack can do but Slack was first out the day and landed fairly easy.
Cisco Unified Communications Manager (Call Manager), Cisco Unified Border Element (CUBE), Zoom
Personally, I think it's going to depend on how the user intends on using it. Webex Teams runs in different modes, even Cisco Jabber can be configured to run in Webex Teams mode. It's definitely well suited for remote locations that exceed the Cisco Jabbers (expressway) round trip delay. It's a perfect setup for softphone requirements. It's less appropriate for those legacy users who demand a physical handset. They still exist folks!