Engage Real Time and Asynchronously with Team Using Webex App

Webex supports virtual meetings, consulting, support, outreach, and other engagement at our institution. Throughout the pandemic, Webex provided a critical tool to replace face to face meetings with its virtual platform on desktop and mobile applications, allowing staff to hold meetings for small groups, 1:1 conferences, large scale events, team building exercises, committee engagement, responding to help desk tickets, and more. Webex also allowed our team to maintain critical connections from home using asynchronous methods.

Ensuring effective communication in real-time, whether message-based or audio/video. Identifying when staff are available during the day to meet or check in. Keeping up with projects, work tasks, and general productivity.

One key challenge was ensuring that remote employees felt equally engaged during meetings. Webex provides asynchronous and synchronous tools including chat, audio, video, live captions, transcription, and AI summaries. Even though we're a hybrid team, we can stay updated using the Webex platform. We've been able to create channels for sharing project notes and monitoring tickets. We use it for quick calls with managers and colleagues and generally staying updated with the organization, division, and office. We don't use it for training, however, as it doesn't work well for our needs, but for supporting the hybrid workplace, it is adequate.

Many employees appreciate the flexibility of working remotely for part of the week, which has improved work-life balance and productivity for tasks requiring deep focus. On in-office days, collaboration and team-building activities help maintain a strong sense of community. However, the hybrid model requires intentional communication strategies to ensure equitable engagement for both in-person and remote participants in meetings. Tools like Webex play a critical role in bridging that gap by enabling seamless virtual participation, but technology alone isn’t a complete solution. We’ve found that effective hybrid work requires ongoing effort to create inclusive practices, such as setting clear expectations for responsiveness and maintaining a shared digital workspace for collaboration.

Webex is accessible from any internet-based point. Our campus solution, however, has the Webex room kit, which allows the optimal hybrid solution for online and remote attendance (e.g., people who are on campus will be in the room while people who are at home or the locations can dial in). This works fairly well for some types of meetings, but it's not particularly effective for certain training formats or large meetings/events.

Webex Room Kit works effectively so we haven't tried other products or tools yet. However, we do have other platforms like MS Teams and Google Meet, and the room kit appears to work well with these, which helps offer our users a bit more choice when they are planning a hybrid event or support hybrid working with their departments.

No other products

It is effective to secure the collaborative space, but clunky to manage and coordinate. The interface is not particularly user friendly or accessible.

Noise suppression is helpful as is transcription and note-taking. However, for privacy and legal purposes, Webex needs to have clear notifications that can be customized per state laws (e.g., Maryland is a two-party consent recording state). While these tools are available, not everyone is aware or benefits from them. Moreover, because these are AI tools, we have to be considerate of how others feel about AI usage -- and some people do not want AI to be used in meetings, so many times it is disabled, regardless of how helpful it might be.

I would encourage leadership to look more carefully at the solution for teaching and learning, which is the primary focus of our work as a university. Webex is fine for administrative support, but severely lacking for educational contexts like grading and attendance synchronization to the learning management system. The LTI integration is awful, and Webex does not seem inclined to improve it to benefit educator needs. What works for corporate circumstances does not work for teaching, but Webex keeps trying to fit a square peg in a round hole and force teachers to use something that just doesn't work for the classroom.

Webex was mostly easy to figure out, but if you're not comfortable with technology or web conferencing tools, you might need help or a coach. We find that many people need a good walkthrough and demo as a starting point as well as user guides. Advanced tools often require 1:1 consulting to get familiar, if not master. Workshops are preferable, ideally in small groups or departments, so participants can practice with each other.

I don't believe we purchased premium support -- if we did, we are certainly not getting what we paid for. As I am not part of the decision making process for Webex, I am not sure why we did or did not purchase premium support, but I can speculate that cost was a significant factor.

I have not experienced exceptional support.