People Insights empowers Webex users to see rich, contextually relevant, professional data on the people with whom they are interacting. Meeting participants may access profile data before, during, and after a Webex Meeting. The people profiles help users know who will be attending the meeting, who is currently in the meeting, and persons unexpectedly joining a meeting in progress—and not simply the person’s name, but all available, contextually relevant data. Data types and acquisition are discussed in later sections of this paper, however, such data may include:
This data is gathered from public sources and may be further enriched by the organization administrator enabling a corporate directory integration. In this case, people profiles will provide internal data on participants within the same organization, so that participants may easily access data about their colleagues, such as:
Note that for the time being we will only support displaying this data through Webex applications. We will not provide a public API for person or company data.
During a meeting, participants will see an icon beside the names of people on the participant list and video thumbnails for whom People Insights has a sufficiently rich profile. (Note, not all participants may have a profile. For example, if they have no publicly available online presence and do not have a title in their organization’s corporate directory, then profile information won’t be shown). If a user clicks on this icon, the target participant’s email address is sent to the People Insights database and used to look up the person’s profile. The sidebar then opens to display the People Insights profile of the selected person as well as the company they belong to (see Figure 1).
Figure 1. People Insights information display of a meeting attendee in Webex Meetings.
This readily available access to profiles allows users to see available data on meeting attendees so they can research participants and understand important context during a meeting without ever leaving the flow of the meeting. Furthermore, if someone unexpectedly joins a meeting their information becomes instantly available. Users have complete control over their profiles. They may access their profiles to edit, update, or delete their information (See figures 2 and 3). More information on how to edit profile information is available in the Data Management section of this white paper.
Figure 2. Editing ability for an individual’s People Insights profile. The user controls what gets shared.
Figure 3. Example of a user updating their profile information.
Easy-to-use, readily available access to people profiles makes getting to know meeting attendees extremely easy. Such research may be undertaken:
As noted above, if an organization has elected to enable the corporate directory functionality, participants may access data about their colleagues, such as internal titles, internal contact information, and reporting structures. Hence, instead of having to pull up a separate page to look up meeting attendees in the internal directory to understand where they fit in to the larger organization, the data is readily presented at the click of a button. Uses of the Information may be formal or informal. Formal uses assist in the immediate task, e.g., better understanding of roles and responsibilities. Informal uses include using serendipitous information such as schools or interests in common to build more personal connections.
Developing one’s personal and professional network is important both within and between organizations. Research indicates that increasing the reach and effectiveness of one’s network is a major determinant of personal productivity and organizational effectiveness. Both formal and informal uses of the information benefit collaboration efforts within an organization and meetings between organizations. Formal information, such as a colleague’s location and contact information, can benefit all functions. Informal information, such as noting that a person has an interest in golf, or prior attendance at a university, or membership of a fraternity, can be of particular benefit to, for example, a sales associate looking for ways to relate to a potential client. Because data is collected through automated means (see Public Data in Sources below), data is regularly updated to prevent staleness and to show the latest profile information without the user having to do so manually. Also, given the nature of the data collection, the profile contents are multi-sourced as opposed to other professional profiles (such as LinkedIn), which are single-sourced and reliant upon user updates.
