Webex Hybrid Messaging Roadmap? Jabber/Webex experience is poor

[Mark Holden]

Not sure if this is the best place for this but Hybrid messaging is not great and needs some work. I cannot find any kind of roadmap anywhere and so decided to list the things that are wrong and hope for some feedback on them.

1. Image sent from Webex to Jabber user - When you send a gif or an image from Webex over to a Jabber user the message reads - Shared image. Visit Cisco Webex Teams to view the content. 

This is an awful user experience and something that needs to be removed. I would prefer it to fail and provide a message to the Webex user saying "Gifs/images sent from Webex are not supported by Jabber users" or something like that. 

2. Messaging offline Jabber user - When you send a message from Webex to a Jabber user that's offline nothing happens, not even a message to the Webex user saying that the Jabber user is offline or something like that. This again is a very poor user experience and needs to be fixed. How is Webex not able to realise that the user is offline and provide a failure message? "Jabber user is not online and message cannot be delivered"

3. Presence between Jabber and Webex - This is an absolute mess between apps. Why can Webex not recognise that a user is logged into Jabber and display that fact? Why does it show as @webex for Jabber status for some users that arent even using the Webex app?

Any help on this subject would be greatly appreciated.

[shalong]

Hi Mark and rtauernicht,

Thanks for the detailed post. Hybrid Messaging Service is designed to provide limited messaging interop during a short migration phase, where groups of users will be moved from Jabber/IM&P to Webex at a time. Its feature set is limited to provide the essentials (1:1 messaging). The focus of the messaging team is building out a great messaging experience in the Webex App.

1. Yes, if a Webex user sends a file/image to a Jabber user, the Jabber user will receive a deep link bringing the user to that particular item in their space via the Webex web app.

2. Enablement of Offline Storage on IM&P will allow the Jabber user see the received message when they next login

3. Webex Presence will not reflect Jabber presence. When a Jabber user is enabled for Hybrid Messaging, they are view by the Webex Presence service as being a Webex App user. Consider Hybrid Messaging Service running on Expressway, to simulate the Webex App for multiple users.

At this time there are no plans to add more capabilities to the Hybrid Messaging Service, we recommend that migration periods are as short as possible

Thanks,

Shane

[rtrauernicht]

Shalong thanks for the follow up but you are just explaining how the feature works and not really taking into consideration the changes the community is asking for. We are just trying to make this feature better so it is a viable option as a migration strategy. At the current state it is not prime time to use in a migration. For example I have 4k users that we need to migrate over from Jabber to Webex App. That is deploying the app, training users and following up with each group on the adoption strategy we are taking. This is not a 1 week or 1 month process, it will take several months to roll out so we need a hybrid messaging solution that will work well for adoption. At the current state the gaps in this strategy are a big miss that is hurts the adoption strategy between both products (jabber and webex). This thread is to outline how to make the product better not to combat the use case. Please take these items we are outline into consideration so we can make the Cisco platform better then anything out there. 

[Cole Callahan]

Hi @Mark Holden ,

Thanks for posting your questions/concerns here in the community. I've pushed this to our Technical Marketing Engineers and product team for a response. I'll update this thread once I get a response.

[rtrauernicht]

I have this same experience as you. All these points are 100% and should be looked at. It makes it really hard for users to migrate smoothly to the Webex App. Right now the biggest hurdle for us is your first point as we don't want certain users to move to the Webex App yet and when they receive a message from a Webex App user via GIF/File Transfer/Picture it directs them to a link to log into the Webex App which is terrible. 

What would be the best way to get traction on this so we can get some of these items moved up on the priority list?