topic Re: Org Admin recommended configurations in Webex Administration

Org Admin recommended configurations

mollydubow — Tue, 13 Apr 2021 20:14:38 GMT

Have you implemented all of the Webex recommended essential configurations in your org?

The configs I'm asking about are:

Phase one:

Verify Domain
Claim Users
Claim Domain
Site linking

Phase two:

DirSync
SSO
Calendar features

If you did all of them: What benefits do you get from enabling these items? How did you measure success of enabling them?

If you didn't, why?

Re: Org Admin recommended configurations

Eder-Romero — Fri, 28 May 2021 05:36:23 GMT

Hello Mollydubow,

I dind't have the fortune to do the initial configuration, but as I know, it is a recommendation to do phase one, to pass or continue to the phase two.

Phase 1 as initial, you should verify domains and claim it, doing that, makes a belong of webex service, to your organization or to your costumer. That is why you should first do all the topics of the phase one, to pass to the next one.

Regards.

Eder RO

Re: Org Admin recommended configurations

Roger Kallberg — Fri, 28 May 2021 11:17:07 GMT

We have all of these set. There are a number of good things that this brings, I'll list a few below.

Ease of authentication with SSO. No more hassle with user name and password.
Security enhancements linked to not having users use notoriously insecure way of authentication with user name and password.
Create users automagically by synchronization from a directory source.
- This can if setup properly bring over profile pictures.
- Identify room accounts to not create user for these so that they can be setup as a workspace with hybrid calendar.
Calendar integration is a game changer for simplicity of the join experience for users. No more typing in meeting numbers as you can simple press the OBTP on the touch panel to join the meeting or speak with the device to have it join the meeting touch-less.
Enable video devices for Edge for devices. This brings a whole loads of goodies. For examples see below.
- Speech control of devices.
- Cloud update of software.
- Hybrid Calendar
- Native Webex meeting experience
No users that has free Webex accounts with the corporate email account. All users are controlled in the same Control Hub.

There are very likely a whole load of things not mentioned, these where the once that came to mind from the top of my head.

Re: Org Admin recommended configurations

Stephanie Knoop — Thu, 10 Jun 2021 23:59:37 GMT

We have done the following:

Verify Domain
Claim Users
Site linking
SSO
Calendar features

SSO eases authentication and provides our security team with necessary controls.

Site linking has been great for administrative purposes.

O365 calendar integration is a mixed bag yet. It's great to synchronize Webex App status when you have a Webex tied to a meeting, but until calendar meetings are also reflected for status, this is missing the boat. We're also using Webex Edge with O365 integration for a handful of our room devices (we have TMS/XE as well) and I certainly appreciate the fact that that integration recognizes SIP URIs to ease joining of non-Webex, SIP standard meetings from room devices. Once personal devices are capable of calendar integration (fingers crossed this is on the roadmap) this will be even more beneficial/

We have not done:

Claim Domain - two reasons we have not claimed our domain are that we don't automatically want to create accounts for the mis-entered email addresses. Currently there is no easy way to sort for "not verified" user accounts and there is no way to bulk delete them. Additionally, as a Cisco partner, claiming our domain could be limiting when working within our customer's Orgs.
DirSync - the primary reason we have not done this is due to internal email address formatting challenges that do not align with the case requirements of Control Hub.

Re: Org Admin recommended configurations

Sebastian Leuser — Fri, 02 Jul 2021 16:55:00 GMT

We have done the following:

- Verify Domains

- Claim Domains

- Claim Users

- SSO

- Directory Connector incl. group based license assignment
Benefits: Improved User Management for >150.000 Users

- All production Webex sites Control Hub administrated on latest channel

Benefits: Most actual software versions and features to improve productivity of the users and fast bugfixing

- CUCM Softphone

- Hybrid Messaging for Integration of existing Jabber environment during transition from Jabber to Webex App

- Hybrid Calendar Exchange and Hybrid Calendar O365 for Calendar Integration for our users, which are partly still on On Prem Exchange

- Video Mesh - Bandwidth and call flow optimization

- Enterprise Content Management - SharePoint Online for Integration of existing Sharepoint environment

- Webex Edge Connect for improved quality and less independence from Internet

- Webex Edge Audio for additional audio dial in numbers and fail over in peak moments like COVID19 Lockdown 1

Re: Org Admin recommended configurations

LandrinLong — Thu, 08 Jul 2021 16:09:50 GMT

We have all of our phases done except for the calendar features. We are currently going through a migration from on premise exchange to O365. So instead of having Expressway servers, we're just waiting for the migration to be complete, then we will integrate calendar services at that point.

Re: Org Admin recommended configurations

tuyennam84 — Fri, 09 Jul 2021 11:02:18 GMT

We did phase 1&2.

- Benefits:

1/ Easy sync users from AD to Webex.

2/ One profile to login and authentication with SSO.

3/ OBTP feature is OK.

- Need improve:

1/ We are using SSO authentication with third-party identity provider (O365), and we have multitenant with multidomain. At the current we can only authenticate with one Microsoft tenant.

2/ We wish Webex can support multi-authentication with local built-in and SSO.

Thanks,

Re: Org Admin recommended configurations

chjones2 — Thu, 15 Jul 2021 21:17:45 GMT

I performed the following configs for one of my customers Webex CH:

Phase one:

Verify Domain - We had multiple domains to be verified, which was performed
Claim Users - We had a mass confusion in the beginning and many users jumped in and created their own "consumer" accounts, but we were able to get it all cleared up and claimed
Claim Domain - Once all domains were verified and users claimed, we claimed the domains to make sure no one else could create consumer accounts use the domains
Site linking- This was pretty straight forward but all domains were linked to their Webex Site Admin DBs

Phase two:

DirSync - We used Directory Connector, but will soon not need it because the customer is getting ready to migrate to full O365
SSO- This was a easy fortunately because the customer already had AD in Azure
Calendar feature - This was a bit of a back and forth situation because we were lead to believe we MUST have EXP-C and E to support the connectors, but finally figured out only EXP-C was required. Not too happy about it because we spent a lot of time and resource getting certs and DNS records created for an EDGE we wont use.

Overall, great learning experience, which is the best way to learn from your own mistakes!!

Re: Org Admin recommended configurations

hector.ochoa — Tue, 20 Jul 2021 21:18:01 GMT

We did phases 1 and 2 except calendar features.
Once the implementation was complete, administration became very simple.
We had problems with the claim users part, because we did not fully understand how it works, since users tried to enter their accounts before the synchronization was complete with DirSync and that caused free accounts to be created.
At the end of the day we corrected the problem and everything worked perfectly.

Re: Org Admin recommended configurations

Hugo Chevalier — Wed, 21 Jul 2021 15:24:26 GMT

We faced issue to claim users that 1st create an account with their personnal email address, we cannot migrate them to our Org keeping their data .. even if they change the email address of their webex account to their professionnal email address ...:(

Re: Org Admin recommended configurations

jamesdic — Thu, 22 Jul 2021 01:32:59 GMT

Thanks Roger. I will be writing some documentation concerning the importance of correctly configuring a new account and you have provided some great insight.

Re: Org Admin recommended configurations

KimberNelson — Thu, 22 Jul 2021 19:18:03 GMT

We did Phase 1 & 2. Our users love the SSO option because we have our other programs using SSO. A one-click login is the best. Our students don't have the option to changing their screen names by using the SSO (a big plus).

Re: Org Admin recommended configurations

ellen.tutterow — Sat, 24 Jul 2021 23:43:30 GMT

I have not done any, because I am doing the training first.

Re: Org Admin recommended configurations

Robert Ecke — Tue, 03 Aug 2021 09:26:01 GMT

Have you implemented all of the Webex recommended essential configurations in your org?

Yes as a partner we implemented all of these for our org and for a lot of our customer orgs.

Re: Org Admin recommended configurations

cbelke — Wed, 04 Aug 2021 18:10:27 GMT

Always make sure you are doing the phase 1 first, and phase 2 second. Your goal to success is streamline the user management, reduce the need for hand-on management, and enable a consistent end user experience. The SSO is relatively simple and you'll be working a bit harder with the hybrid calendar configuration, and make sure you go through the pre-reqs in Contro Hub for the hybrid setups.

Re: Org Admin recommended configurations

asabitava — Wed, 04 Aug 2021 21:55:45 GMT

Done step by step as recommended

Re: Org Admin recommended configurations

Katana3128 — Fri, 06 Aug 2021 11:28:05 GMT

Hi,
we had implemented all of the both phases.

DirSync is very helpful for easy admin of users
SSO is helpful for users to login to the webex and very important for our security team.
Calendar features help users to create and manage meetings and no one is late

Thanks

Re: Org Admin recommended configurations

Marcour — Thu, 12 Aug 2021 13:19:44 GMT

I implemented all but DirSync and SSO. Our data security and protection department did not allow me to do that. It's a German thing...

Re: Org Admin recommended configurations

mh1983 — Thu, 12 Aug 2021 14:33:09 GMT

Great topic and am enjoying the responses!

I was wondering if anyone relied on any admin documentation on help.webex.com/cisco.com or other materials to implement these recommended configurations.

If yes to using docs, what was your experience? Positive, negative, or neutral? Any suggestions?

If no to using docs, why?

Thanks in advance!

Re: Org Admin recommended configurations

haundh — Thu, 12 Aug 2021 19:17:00 GMT

I'm not our site admin, but as a user, it looks like we have them all enabled. Since Webex is my daily softphone, I appreciate the SSO.