Webex Update (9/15/2020) – Breakout Sessions!

On Tuesday, September 15, Cisco will deploy additional updates to Webex Meetings. The highlights of these additional features are below. Full release notes are also available

Video Breakout Sessions in Webex Meetings
Breakout sessions allow you to place your meeting participants into smaller groups to collaborate and share ideas. Inside of the breakout session is like being in a smaller meeting, complete with audio and video where participants can collaborate and share content, or even ask the host for help from the main session. For more details, you can explore these capabilities in depth. UWW users may have up to 100 breakout sessions per meeting with a maximum of 1,000 meeting participants.

To sign up for a training session on Breakouts please see our calendar.

Be sure anyone participating in a Webex Meeting on a mobile phone or mobile device updates the app on their device. While they will be able to join the meeting, they will not be able to go into a breakout session until they update the app. UWW owned devices will automatically update, but student apps and devices may not.

View of Breakout session tool within Webex Meetings

In-Meeting Cohost Role
As a meeting host, you can now assign other meeting participants as cohosts. Cohosts share your host-level privileges like muting and unmuting other participants, moving participants to or admitting participants from the lobby, and more!

You can assign cohosts on the fly, directly in-meeting, by right-clicking the participant and changing their role to Cohost. You may have as many cohosts in a meeting as you wish.

The following features aren’t currently supported in a breakout session and will be addressed in a future release:

  • Raise hand, People Insights profile, and the notes taker role
  • Closed captioning
  • Recording breakout sessions
  • “Optimize for motion and video” content sharing
  • Sharing web browser or multimedia
  • Annotation and Whiteboard
  • Live streaming
  • Polling
  • Saving chat
  • Users who join from the Webex Meeting web app can’t share content

Grid Layout for Cloud Recordings
With the grid layout becoming the default experience in Webex Meetings, meeting recordings will default to the grid layout in this update for new and existing Webex hosts. This applies to both Webex Meetings and Webex Events. To return to previous settings or make changes to your recording preferences, sign in at uww.webex.com, navigate to Preferences and then select the Recordings tab. Be sure to hit SAVE!

Recording settings in your preferences

Participant Content Sharing
Hosts can now allow the participants to share their screen during scheduled meetings or Personal Rooms meetings.

Additional attendee settings

If you have any questions or concerns, please contact the UW-W Learning Technology Center.