Best practices

Space activities

Let’s get your team working better together

All the action in Webex takes place in your Spaces. Each Space has buttons to achieve everything you need.

You can access Space settings with the (i) button near the Space name to adjust notifications.

Meet / Call people in the Space using audio and voice.

Click the activity menu to access the Space features.

Message: Send secure, instant messages to a Space. Add screen captures, emojis, and @mention people.

Whiteboard: Capture your ideas on virtual whiteboards and continue to edit. They’re saved in the Space for easy reference.

Schedule: Create and schedule meetings for everyone in the Space. This opens a calendar invitation where the meeting details are automatically added.

People: See all members of the Space or who is in your meeting. Add people to the Space from here too.

Files: Lists all files, photos, videos, and whiteboard images that have been shared, they are saved in the Space too.

My Threads: Lists all the threads in the Space.

Links: Lists all the links shared in the Space.

Top tip

First, send a message
to let people know why you’re about to meet
so that they can decide
if they need to join.

Teams and Spaces, the basic building blocks

What is a Space?

A Space is a group of people who are working together. These can either be 1 on 1 Spaces named after people or for larger groups with a descriptive name. They can be independent or in a Team.

What is a Team?

A team is a group of people who are connecting for a longer-term project or business objective. Each Team has a Space called General by default and custom Spaces that divide up work or priorities of the team.

When to use a Team vs a Space

	Typical activity	Typical duration	How to retire	Relationship
Team	Distributed and diverse.	Mid to long-term.	Space moderators can archive Teams, but not delete.	A Team has a permanent Space named ‘general’ and any number of additional Spaces added by members.
Space	Focused and specific.	Short to mid-term.	If everyone chooses to leave the Space, it is deleted.	A Space may be standalone or within a Team.

Working with external people

Webex makes it easy to work with anyone - both internal teammates and external vendors, customers, or partners. You can invite external participants to Teams and Spaces by default. If an external person is in your Space, it is always indicated with a yellow icon on the bottom right of the window.

Tip

Go to a Space and click the icon to quickly see a list of people with email domains outside of your company.

3 best practices for collaborating with external people:

1. Awareness

When setting up new Teams and Spaces, let everyone know if the intention is to include external people. Be clear about what should and shouldn’t be discussed with them. A best practice is to indicate ‘EXTERNAL’ clearly in your Space name.

2. Moderation

For more control, turn on “moderate Space” to control membership. This way, you can be sure that members don’t accidentally invite external people to Spaces made for internal people only.

3. Spaces

Spaces within Teams offer an easy way to work with external people, without giving full access to the entire team.

Too many notifications?

Well, aren’t you popular?

If you are a member of many different Teams and Spaces, you may want to manage your notifications. Good news, you can select which options best suit you.

Here’s a handy guide of how you can take control of your notifications:

Global

Apply the same notifications settings to all
Spaces at once. See set notifications for all Spaces if you need help setting this.

Custom

Customize notifications for each individual Space. See set notifications for certain Spaces if you need help setting this.

In both cases, you can choose the following options:

All messages
For those Spaces that are really important to your role, use this setting to get notified every time a new message comes in. We don’t recommend this for larger Spaces.
@mentions only
A really useful setting that means you get notified when someone @mentions your name directly or uses the
@all feature to mention everyone in the Space.
We highly recommend this to help you manage what’s really important, especially in large Spaces.
Off
To switch off all notifications. Going on vacation?
This one’s for you.

Learn more at Cisco’s Collaboration Help Portal.

Share and search

It’s amazing how much you can get done on Cisco Webex, even when you’re mobile. No matter where your team is, working on files and content together should be simple. So, we made it that way.

Sharing

Things you can share:

Messages
Webpage URLs
Documents and files
Screen captures and screenshots
Images
Videos
GIF animations
Whiteboards

You can upload files up to 2GB file size. Most content can be previewed in the Space, without the need to download. This is especially useful when you’re mobile. You can share content during a meeting without sending files. Each meeting attendee can share their screen or specific applications.

Searching

Search is easy. Click the search bar and enter your search terms. As you type, Webex will present search results grouped into Spaces, Messages, and Files to help you pinpoint what you are looking for. Plus, you can refine your search by typing “In:” to find something in a specific Space. Or, type “From:” to search messages or content sent by a specific person.

You can filter by

The full list
Notifications
Unread messages
@mentions to me
@mentions to all
Threads
Flags

You can also use search to quickly find individuals. Just start typing their name to see matches appear.

Power Pack

Power Pack is a collection of tools for simplifying repetitive tasks in Cisco Webex. Power Pack can be found here.

Important note: Power Pack is a beta service and not subject to formal Cisco support processes and service level agreements.

Tools currently available in Power Pack:

Invites allow bulk uploading of people into a Space, instead of adding them one by one.

Broadcasts send the same message to multiple Spaces you’re a member of.

Exodus enables you to remove yourself or others from multiple Spaces at once, to declutter your account.

Export is for extracting member details from a Space to use as invites to a new Space. This is useful for creating a new Space for a different purpose with the same members.

Team Space manager is for creating new Teams, and their Spaces. Manage team membership here.

My stats provides details about your activities. See how many Spaces, Teams, and 1 on 1 conversations you’re in.

Alpha tools is a storage place for extra useful features that have been requested by some but are too specific for the core product.

Support tells you where to get help with Power Pack and has an option for joining the Ask Power Pack Space, so that you can interact directly with the Cisco team.

Large communication Spaces

For larger businesses, Webex can also be used to communicate with a large group of people all at once (up to 5000). Here are some examples:

Executives – keep your finger on the pulse

Executives regularly run “town halls” to communicate with the company. Now, keeping conversations and ideas flowing in between these scheduled sessions is easy.

Top tips

Create a Space for your town hall gatherings
Record your town halls, and post the recording in the Space
Encourage continued discussion and Q&A between events

Experts –
ask me anything

Even the most organized teams occasionally need an answer from an expert, fast. To help your employees and clients, why not set up an “Ask me anything” Q&A Space?

Top tips

Create Spaces for different areas of expertise, invite the right experts and members.
Encourage people to ask whatever they want about the area of expertise.

Announcements

Need to ensure everyone gets the latest news, fast? Create an announcement Space in Webex, to post bite-size updates and links to the latest information.

Top tips

Switch on “announcement mode” to create a one-way communication channel.
Share bite-sized updates on the latest news, policy changes, and much more - all in one place.

Events made easy

Events large and small, rely on a wide variety of suppliers, partners and employees working together. Cisco Webex is the perfect tool to bring everyone together - before, during and after the event.

Here’s a handy guide for how you could host a typical event with presentations, speakers and of course, attendees.

Before

Bring the event team together

Create a team with a Space for each activity e.g. audio/visual, security, promotion, budget.

Connect regularly in real-time

Schedule weekly meetings in your Team Space. When you start the meeting, everyone will see an easy ‘join’ button on their devices.

Keep attendees updated

Create a moderated space to announce event updates. Members can only read content, and you can see who has viewed it. Use Power Pack to bulk upload invitations.

Share content

Upload images, plans, presentations, agendas, parking details, etc, so everything is in one place. Everyone has access to search and can quickly find what they need.

On the day

Communicate in real-time with attendees

Use Spaces and Teams to publish on-the-day information and reminders. Create a Space for presenters and VIPs to keep them up to date.

Take speaker questions from the audience

Create a Space just before the event, for speaker feedback. Invite people to propose questions for speakers or comment on content presented throughout the day.

Manage the event in real-time

Keep in constant contact with your event team so that the entire day goes without a hitch.

After the event

Have a team debrief

Congratulate and wrap up the event with the team. Now it’s easy to share thank you messages to the event support team.

Share how it went

Use Spaces to share event highlights, photographs, metrics, and feedback with everyone and provide information about the next event.

Top tips for training

You know how easy Cisco Webex is – now it’s time to tell your teams! The very best training focuses on how Webex improves the way people work, not just how to use it.

Successful training sessions have:

Simple objectives that the attendees care about
Clear solutions to meet those objectives
Immediate actions attendees can take during and after the training to change their behavior

Training formats

In-person training

If you’re planning on delivering an in-person training session, we recommend small groups of less than 20. It’s just the right size for a balance of interaction and lets the instructors help students individually when needed.

Top tips

Add a little personality to profile pictures! Hilarious hats, funny faces – try and make the initial touch and feel of Webex fun, human and personal. In an in-person setting provide a few fun props to make setting up their initial profile fun.

Virtual training

The key to virtual training? Keep it interactive! Make sure you include activities that require active participation throughout, even something like “please answer in the Webex Space” keep attendees engaged.

Top tip

Giving prizes - virtually

Even virtually, you can reward participation with cost-free prizes! People value time more than anything. How about running a virtual competition to get the most number of colleagues in a Space?

Hybrid training

Hosting training where some people are in the same room as the instructor and others join in virtually carries the most risk that those attending remotely feel disengaged. Generally, we recommend you separate these out.

Top tips

Connect hubs of teams

If you have to provide a hybrid option – do it with hub locations. Ideally, you would have 3-5 ‘hubs’ of in-person teams joining, with each a mix of in-person and virtual tasks and activities to complete as they learn.

Use this top ten checklist to get started:

1. Audience

Make sure you know who’s attending the training, and what their team needs to achieve on a daily basis.

2. Background

Provide information on why their leadership wanted to invest in better team collaboration, to get better organic buy-in.

3. Relevancy

Come prepared with a few ways Webex can help them achieve their specific goals. In particular, make sure you cover what's in it for them.

4. Keep the conversation

Create a Space and give it a name like “Webex Training for team x”. Invite all trainees to the Space.

5. Post a welcome message

that introduces the Space and its purpose. Share any Webex user guides or videos to the Space to build up a bank of useful resources.

6. RSVP

Create a meeting invite for the training for everyone in the Space.

7. Get interactive

Ask for interaction before the session. Get trainees to introduce themselves and tell you where they’re from, build conversation before you dive into the training.

8. Small and simple

Set small tasks and give positive feedback along the way!

9. Taskmaster

Try and include a wide range of tasks. If you’re getting good engagement before the training, try creating a drawing on a whiteboard. Encourage the continued use of the Space by making it fun and competitive.

10. Be prepared

Open any slides, applications, websites, and a calendar invite that you plan on showing during your session. Close any applications that show pop-up notifications and your browser tabs.