Cisco Webex And Microsoft Teams

The documents my team produces aren’t solo efforts. When I build a presentation, for example, I’ll leave placeholders for colleagues to fill in, ask people to review, and maybe work with a designer. We have great collaboration tools at Cisco with Webex Teams, and with the new approach to bring Webex Teams with you wherever you work, I can use one platform in one place without losing my train of thought…

Microsoft Teams - Chat-based workspace in Office 365. Webex - Connect with anyone, anywhere, any time.

Cisco IT’s Collaboration strategy is to mirror the Webex Teams approach to building bridges between team collaboration and other solutions for a continuous workflow. With Office 365, we continue with this theme, so you can efficiently collaborate whether you’re out and about on your phone in Webex Teams or writing a document on your laptop in Word. As “Customer Zero” for the Webex Teams and Microsoft Office 365 integration, Cisco IT is trying out different use cases to give customers the benefit of our real-world experience.

We’re introducing the Webex Teams integration into Office 365 to Cisco employees in three phases.

Phase 1 – Email and Calendar Migration

As “Customer Zero” for the Webex Teams and Microsoft Office 365 integration, Cisco IT is trying out different use cases to give customers the benefit of our real-world experience. We’re introducing the Webex Teams integration into Office 365 to Cisco employees in three phases. Phase 1 – Email and Calendar Migration.
Easily start or join your Webex Meetings directly from Microsoft Teams. See your full meeting list and schedule meetings on your time. For more information, visit http://cs.co/9001EP69L.

We’ve worked on enabling Cisco collaboration in Outlook for years, and this historically has been a challenge in a mixed environment, we have both Macs and PCs and we never seem to get everything working on both – today though, we have all the features on all the platforms integrated with Webex Teams. Click to Call, Click to Chat, and Presence all work in Outlook on Mac and PC and we enabled this as we migrated mailboxes to O365. We’ve also integrated Webex Teams into O365 calendar to get employees to their meetings faster. It’s all part of our continual effort to keep our everyday tools modern, user friendly, and making the collaboration experience seamless – after all, we are a global company and a lot of our teams span multiple time zones.

Phase 2 – Co-authoring and Co-editing

Say I want to edit an Office document that someone added to a Webex Teams space. Before, I’d have to download the document, open it, edit, save, and upload the new version to the space. Did I download the latest version? Not sure. We’ve made life much simpler by integrating Webex Teams with OneDrive and SharePoint Online. Now, I can add an Office document to a Webex Teams space from OneDrive using the file storage and sharing integration in Webex Teams. I have the option to grant editing rights to those who have prior access to my document or to open it up to everyone in the Webex Teams space.

Once the document is uploaded onto OneDrive, no matter where I work, it’s the same document, whether I am in Webex Teams, or using any app in the Office Suite. The experience is seamless – and I don’t even need to re-upload. Co-authoring and editing are a game-changer for us – especially when you can use these tools in our real-time video meetings. Our users are pretty excited about it, and it’s integrated right into Webex Teams. Watch this video to learn more about this experience.

Phase 3 – Social Collaboration

This final step is currently in progress. If I’m in Word editing a colleague’s document, I feel comfortable making little changes like correcting a date. But other changes require some conversation first—for example, “In paragraph 3, you said ‘service’ but I think you meant ‘architecture.’ Right?” So, we wrote an add-in to the Office 365 menu that creates a Webex Teams side panel, allowing you to chat directly from within the document. It’s handy for keeping all conversations about a document in the same place. Plus, the conversation is saved in real time in my Webex Teams, so I can stay in the loop even if I am on the go and don’t have the document open. It’s another win for collaboration, and ultimately user productivity. I’m not sure how many minutes I have spent searching emails for documents, but now I don’t have to, and neither do our employees.

Next up: Adding Collaboration to our Other Cloud Services

In integrating Webex Teams and Office 365, we built what we’re calling the Secure Digital Experience platform. In addition to collaboration, it brings together Duo Security, Advanced Malware Protection (AMP), and our eStore (so that we can make sure we don’t exceed our license count). Once we’ve finished the Office 365 rollout, we plan to connect the platform to other cloud services, including IBM Connections, Salesforce, and ServiceNow.

How did we manage this massive overhaul of tools with minimal user downtime? Migrating 118,000 mailboxes is not easy, but you can learn more about it from my colleagues Kelly Conway and Caroline Te Aika.

The platform has an interesting security angle. Since email contains confidential information, we allow access to Office 365 only from trusted devices. But who wants to wait for a VPN connection every time they check their email away from the office? You can read more about our security considerations here, in a blog by my colleague Dave Jones and myself.

Questions? Ideas? Please share in the comment box.

If you’re in the situation where you’re using Microsoft Teams meetings at home but have Cisco video conferencing devices in the office, you’re probably looking for a way to make these work together.

In this post, we run through all your options for Microsoft Teams integration with Cisco video conferencing.

Jump to:

Cisco Webex Meetings for Microsoft Teams

You can use the Cisco Webex Meetings app to schedule, start, or join a Cisco Webex meeting or Webex Personal Room right from within Microsoft Teams.

All you need to do is install the Cisco Webex Meetings app into Microsoft Teams. If you don’t have admin access, you’ll need to ask your Microsoft 365 administrator to add this for you.

Once you have the app, you will get a Webex tab in Microsoft Teams.

Once installed, you can view your upcoming meetings and join straight from the list.

You can also join meeting rooms or start a new meeting with a recent contact - all without leaving Teams.

When a meeting is about to start, you can even get a Webex notification in Teams.

This integration is great for getting the most of virtual meetings when you’re working away from the office.

How to join a Microsoft Teams meeting from a Cisco device

If you’re phasing out legacy Cisco equipment because you now use Teams, the process probably isn’t big bang.

If you’re migrating users and rooms from one platform to another, there will be an overlap period where both are in play.

At this point, it’s important to ensure your new Microsoft 365 software integrates with your existing Cisco equipment.

The below endpoints can't join Teams meetings without native cloud video interop to bridge the connection.

OneMeeting provides just that.

Once installed, here’s how you can join a Microsoft Teams meeting from Cisco devices:

Using the Cisco DX80 with Microsoft Teams

To use Microsoft Teams on Cisco room kit like the DX80, follow these instructions:

Dial the SIP address provided in the Join with a video conferencing device section of the Teams meeting
Enter the VTC conference ID when prompted
Join the Teams meeting

Using the Cisco SX10 with Microsoft Teams

To use Microsoft Teams on Cisco room kit like the SX10, follow these instructions:

Dial the SIP address provided in the Join with a video conferencing device section of the Teams meeting
Enter the VTC conference ID when prompted
Join the Teams meeting

Joining Microsoft Teams meetings from any Cisco device

In fact, for OneMeeting customers, joining a Teams meeting from any Cisco devices is as simple as the two examples above.

Dial the SIP address provided in the Join with a video conferencing device section of the Teams meeting
Enter the VTC conference ID when prompted
Join the Teams meeting

Can Webex Teams communicate with Microsoft Teams?

The Webex portfolio used to be split to include Webex Teams and Webex Meetings. Cisco has now combined the two apps to make a single Webex app for both meetings and messaging.

Webex users who choose to stay in Webex for their messaging will likely be using Webex Teams instead of Webex Meetings.

If you’re a Teams user and you need to communicate with a colleague or external contact in Webex, you have a few options.

Microsoft Teams and Webex message interop

If you have one department that uses Webex and another who uses Microsoft Teams, you can enable message interop between the two platforms.

This means you can send messages from Webex to Microsoft Teams.

All you need to do is install Mio in the background to get this set up.

For example, if your sales team uses Webex because they always used Webex Meetings in the past, they can now chat with your customer service team who use Microsoft Teams.

You can use message interop internally for both direct messaging and working in channels.

Microsoft Teams and Webex external federation

If you need to message from Microsoft Teams to an external contact - like a contractor or partner - you can do this by installing a universal channel.

You’ll need to be a Microsoft admin - or get your Microsoft admin to authorise the app - so you can install the universal channels app in the background.

Once installed, you create a new channel in Microsoft Teams and send a link to your external contact who uses Webex.

Once they join, you’ve created a channel across platform for you both to collaborate in.

Webex Calling in Microsoft Teams

Cisco Webex also provides a calling platform since its acquisition of BroadSoft in 2018.

While adding a calling platform to Cisco’s portfolio, it also means any BroadSoft customers who want to use Microsoft Teams must integrate the two.

If you want to use Webex Calling from Microsoft Teams, you need to download the Webex call app for Microsoft Teams.

Once installed, when your users start an external call from Microsoft Teams, it will use the Webex calling platform.

To start this process:

Check all users who need this integration are verified in the Webex Control Hub
Make sure they are registered to Cisco Webex Calling or in your Cisco Unified Communications Manager (CUCM)
Install the Webex app for each user you need to use Webex Calling
Update phone numbers for users in the Azure Active Directory (AD)
If you don’t already, change your permission policies to allow third-party apps
Then, in the Microsoft Teams Admin Center, click Teams Apps then Manage Apps
Search for Webex Call and change to Allow

Next time your users log in, they will be using the Webex Calling platform even when they start an external call from Microsoft Teams.

While this sounds great on the surface, it does open up a new window when you dial.

If you’ve moved to Microsoft Teams to have all your communications in one place, this is a little beside the point.

Meetings between Webex and Microsoft Teams

To facilitate meetings between Webex users and Microsoft Teams users, OneMeeting provides a one-touch join experience regardless of the platform you’re using.

When you configure OneMeeting in the background, meeting participants on either Webex or Microsoft Teams can join the same meeting using a unique URL.

When you click the meeting URL, you can join from whichever meeting app you prefer - Webex or Microsoft Teams.

Joining Webex meetings from Microsoft Teams in the office

OneMeeting works for both remote meetings and in-person meetings. You don’t even have to change video devices. OneMeeting allows you to join any meeting from any device.

Picture the scene:

You’ve rolled out virtual meeting rooms to your users so they could all work from home during the pandemic.
You already had video conferencing equipment installed in your meeting rooms and boardrooms.
Because you needed the quickest solution to work from home, your virtual meeting rooms and existing video conferencing system in your office aren’t the same.
People are starting to use the office again but your video platforms don’t work with each other.

If your scenario is something like this, you’re not alone.

Sandwiched between the millions of Microsoft Teams users are millions of users with other video conferencing services.

In your company, this could be hundreds or thousands. Even if it’s a handful, it’s an issue you shouldn’t have to deal with.

And with OneMeeting, you don’t need to.

Video interoperability

OneMeeting uses Pexip’s video interoperability service to connect your legacy kit in the office with Microsoft Teams at home.

By connecting your video platforms together, you create one-click join experience for your meeting participants.

Cisco Webex Vs Microsoft Teams

Pexip apps and APIs creates a bridge between any SIP or H323 video conferencing system and the Microsoft cloud.

Taking Pexip apps one step further, OneMeeting is unique in that it takes the Microsoft Teams Cloud Video Interop (CVI) and makes your experience Microsoft Teams first.

In addition, you benefit from OneMeeting providing:

A vendor-agnostic approach
Full customisation of the native Microsoft Teams meeting invitation
Full customisation and branding of the OneMeeting service from your video conferencing rooms
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This means your users get a consistent experience regardless of the meeting room they join from. Less switching between meeting apps means happier users, less administration, and a slicker experience.

OneMeeting enables users to share and collaborate from any in-room video conferencing system, as well as from their desktop or smartphone.

Cisco Webex And Microsoft Teams Free

Once installed, you remove the scheduling conflicts, awkward user experiences, and integration issues.

Microsoft Teams And Webex Interop

You can view the OneMeeting technical documentation here.