Webex Connect version 7 - What's in it

[bjames]

Hi,

We've been notified Connect will be upgraded (unless another delay) to version 7 on March 1. There were not too many details of te new features/fixes/etc., so can anyone share here what it's going to improve/included?

Thanks in advance,

Bob James

[ijmf]

Hi,

I've been notified that the C7.0 client will be available for upgrade on the 7th March. For a complete description of enhancements and features please reference the release notes, http://support.webex.com/webexconnect/70/rn/connectreleasenotes_c70.pdf.  The release notes are still in process of being finalized and will be updated by the time WebEx Connect C7.0 is available.

Regards

Iain Fulton

[John Layton]

Thanks for the document link Iain.  On Page 6 under the Supported Architectures the 9971 IP Phone is not listed but the 9951 is.  Is this an omission or is it accurate?

Also, CUPC supports video between the client PC and a 9971 endpoint.  Since both use the same CSF how come this is not supported with Connect?

Thanks

John

[mvild]

Yes, 9971 is supported.. Thanks for the catch on the release notes.

The UC integration of Connect does not support support video, only audio.  The video (High Quality video) support with Connect is peer to peer (PC to PC).  The new PVE (Precision Video Engine) for all clients is targeted for end of year.

Really, as a rule of thumb, any CTI controllable phone should be supported.

[bjames]

Thanks Iain,

Not much meat in it for me. I do have one more question; why is so much effort being put in this client when the unified client is 2-3 months away?

Cheers,

Bob

[mvild]

Hi Bob,

If you are referring to the Cisco Jabber for Windows client, that is targeted for the end of the year. The Cisco Jabber for Mac is targeted for June/July timeframe.

Connect C7 had been in the works already.  In addition to the new features that you probably read about such as visual voicemail, High Quality video, Enhanced Meetings and Calendar one touch support, Integrated communication Window, richer presence ("sharing in a webex meeting").. it was also built with the the latest Client Services Framework (CSF2G) that has a much smaller footprint and improved audio quality for softphone. The client download for CuciConnect C7 is a single download is also a 1/3 of the size of the previous Cuci-Connect (which required two separate downloads - CSF + Connect).

As we are developing the Cisco Jabber for Windows which is designed to be deployed with either CUP or Cloud backend, the C7 SaaS based windows client is a great improvement from CuciConnect 6.7 and continues to be a viable SaaS based client option.

What kind of 'meat' are you looking for. I will be happy to pass your comments to the product teams.

Thanks as always for your valuable contribtion, Bob!

Maureen

[bjames]

Maureen,

I was more referring to the Mac client, but the Windows client as well. As far as "meat" we have the new client and there isn't much noticeable difference from 6.7 for us, and IMHO the interface looks "cheaper" than 6.7. We are SMB so we do not have a full blown UC system so telephony integration isn't available through connect "Yet".

The video is definitely better quality, but we have had a lot of problems with the sessions just timing out which I have been told is fixed (on the backend) now, but we will see.

I will say the coolest thing I have seem so far is an email from a Cisco employee that I had never conversed with before; I could see their presence in the email, and add them my my contacts for IM them right from their email address in the From line. - Now that's cool.

Now if you could just throw a few dollars at Microsoft to make their architecture xmpp native that would be great

Bob

[bostoncmuser]

I know this is an older thread, but we have only recently started deploying the 7.2 WebEx Connect client to many users. We are running the client with the Call Manager integrations. In the prior version, 6.5, it was possible to start a call with a hard desk phone and then add video to the call. This was one of the best features for us because calls could be easily escalated from IM chat -> hard phone -> video. In 7.2 it appears that you need to do a PC-PC call to be able to add video to a call. This is rather annoying when you are already sitting at your desk using a Cisco IP Phone, but you need to switch to Soft Phone for video support. Seems we lost some level of integration. Are we missing something?

[mvild]

Hi David,

The only video that Connect supported and supports today is PC to PC audio/video via the cloud.  The CUCI integration has never supported video calling in either deskphone or softphone modes.

If you were in deskphone mode and escalated to video I'm not sure how you did that, is it possible that while on that call, you clicked on the video icon (from the old webex ball) and started a PC to PC call audio/video call at the same time?

The WebEx ball was removed and the call control with the client has been much more tightly integrated with CUCM.  If you are on a 'CUCI' call (softphone or deskphone), you would not have the option to place a pc to pc call to that same person from the same chat/conversatoin window.

Thanks,

Maureen