Webex Employee's Favorite Feature of the Month: Messaging

[Erin Breitsprecher]

Keeping teams engaged, informed, and organized is crucial for working efficiently, but it can be hard to bring everyone together to collaborate effectively. We use group messaging on Webex to ensure that our teams can keep work moving, regardless of how we work, when we work, or changing priorities.

Whether we're trying to connect with teams halfway around the globe or simply returning to a conversation when it's convenient, messaging in Webex is crucial in facilitating collaboration. We create and leverage group spaces to enable our cross-functional teams to understand how our projects progress and keep everyone in the loop by updating them simultaneously in the space. If we're on different calls or need to tend to something else, we can. Messaging doesn't require real-time participation, notetaking, or getting recaps from colleagues—everything is saved in the space. We can even give quick feedback by using emoji reactions like a thumbs up!

How do YOU and your teams use messaging in Webex? What's the most helpful messaging feature for working more efficiently? Any messaging tips or tricks you want to share? We want to know! By responding to this post, you will be entered into a random giveaway for some Webex swag!

More about messaging in Webex 

Keep your team and other collaborators in the loop by bringing everyone together in spaces. Instead of tracking down teammates, you can communicate to the masses in one space to make work more efficient. Organize project details, pin messages for easy access, and more while working on your time—all the messages will be there when you're ready.

Get started by creating a group space and sending your first message. Need help? Take a deep dive into everything you need to know.

[Deepak K]

Cisco WebEx makes it easy for anyone to join video conference sessions even without video capabilities.

One of the most powerful features of Cisco WebEx is allowing participants to easily share their desktops or documents in real time. 

The host of the WebEx conference can set certain sharing permissions for applications or documents on their screen. They can then reassign this level of control to anyone in the group. A virtual whiteboard is also available to create annotation tools for note-taking and brainstorming.

[Erin Breitsprecher]

@Deepak K thank you for sharing your experience!

[dtibbe]

I thin WebEx is quite old, isn't it? I prefer using Webex...

[Matt_W]

We love to use the Webex App to communicate both internally and externally.  I love the ability to add a commonly used website to the tabs at the top of the space.  It makes it much easier to direct people to where they need to go when it is inside the space.

Pinning is also one of the top features I use.  It allows me to keep messages from getting lost in the space.

[Erin Breitsprecher]

@Matt_W these are all great features! Thank you for your input. We also link frequently accessed sites and any messages that are helpful to refer back to at the top of the space for quick access, which helps me feel more organized day-to-day.

[Vaijanath Sonvane]

Messaging in Webex App is our go to communication tool. I personally use it to communicate with:

• Team members to share knowledge, documents, important updates on customer issues and other fun messages...
• Customers to share new updates on the topics they are interested in, share project updates, discuss critical issues. I have created spaces for different customers and they post their questions, requests, updates and issue in it. I get notified immediately which helps me to work on it to help them. 
• Cisco TAC Engineers to get update on TAC case and share log files. 
• Cisco Account Managers / SEs to discuss about product roadmap, escalate TAC cases, respond to RFPs and so on..

[Erin Breitsprecher]

@Vaijanath Sonvane thank you for sharing! These are great examples of how you leverage Webex messaging for effective communication with your teams, customers, and Cisco.

[graffixdesign]

Messaging goes a step further for us. Not only does this allow us to stay connected and collaborate effectively in geographically separated areas, but it also enables us to be faster and more efficient.

•  We use help bots in the messaging app to get users faster access to the help they need and even answer basic questions 
•  The ability to jump right from a conversation into a call with a single button is an underrated tool. We've all been in a conversation that needed some clarification. Viola' , problem solved you're on a video call with everyone in 3 seconds.
• Organization. You know when there's 17 topics clogging your feeds? Problem solved. Break those topics into seperate spaces and organize the conversation.

[Erin Breitsprecher]

@graffixdesign thank you for sharing how these messaging features enable your team to increase efficiencies throughout the workday! Keeping teams and topics organized within spaces definitely helps me manage my work at a faster pace.

[Erin Breitsprecher]

@Kathy N. these are great use cases, thank you for sharing with the Community! I like that group spaces provide visibility into what's going on and how easy it is to join the conversation. Your IT Alerts space is an excellent example of that! You bring up a great point - it's nice to have the ability to jump from asynchronous communication right into a meeting when it's helpful to bring everyone together at one time.

[Erin Breitsprecher]

@dtibbe thanks for sharing how you leverage messaging for team collaboration and more focused communication! I agree, I do not miss the constant back and forth with email. I've personally been able to gain a lot of time back in my workday by fully utilizing the messaging features you listed. It's so convenient having everything in one place!

[Kathy N.]

Webex makes our team much more effective since we can communicate asynchronously as we work on projects and coordinate support for our District. 

We created a Space that we use for IT Alerts that has all Central Support Members and Help Desk Staff included.  When an issue arises on our network, in District Apps or other network/system services; it is posted in the IT Alerts space.  This ensures all key staff are aware of the issue and response is quick to begin work on resolving the issue.  

We also have Webex integrated with our Learning Management System and teachers are using it for Classroom Collaboration.  It lets them create groups of students that work on class projects.  We have blocked the browser access to Web.webex.com on all student devices so they can only access it through the LMS which helps our staff to ensure conversations are appropriate and help to foster another learning option.

Personally I use this also to have conversations with Cisco contacts and other customers.  It also lets us easily change to a Webex Meeting if needed.

[dtibbe]

• I like the async way of communication as well. Peeking into spaces is a great helper.
• Using markdown makes messages more readable.
• Sharing knownledge and exchaing ideas in spaces with people from all over the world is awesome. Often a good start to get in touch with experts (and even PMs) in 1:1
• Keeping communication in spaces, best with sharpoint for file storage, helps to keep the communication focused. Good bye to "Re: Re: Fwd: Re: Important Project" mail hell, I don't miss you