Cisco Webex Latest Release - 42.9

Overview

Your Webex service will be upgraded to the Latest release 42.9 according to the Cisco Webex maintenance schedule.

Summary of the upcoming release is below. 

For users

In-meeting experience

• Change default to not allow cohosts to end meeting. This change prevents accidental ending of meetings by cohosts. If an organization wants to change back to allow cohosts to end meetings, they should contact their BT Account Manager to activate this feature.

• Reorder participants on the stage by simply dragging and dropping the video to move into the position you'd like, or use the more options menu in the video thumbnail where you can select move to first position. As an attendee, you can't reorder participants who are being synced by the host or cohost.

• Web App/PWA for Chrome OS: Annotate when sharing an application. Users joined in the Meetings Web App or Meetings PWA for Chrome operating system can now annotate when sharing an application window or chrome tab. To allow everyone to be able to annotate, you need to check Participants privileges and ensure that Annotate is checked. For more details, check Cisco’s article on Annotate in Webex meetings, webinars, events, and training sessions.

Webinar experience

• Track where your webinar attendees are coming from. You can create unique URLs for different platforms and share that unique link to track how many joins or registrations each platform has generated. This feature isn’t supported in China data center.

• Shared content in stage view is now larger in a meeting or webinar. The speaker video is now smaller.

• Simultaneous Interpretation: enable or disable interpretation ad-hoc and set a default language for scheduled meetings, webinars, and Personal Room meetings.* Simultaneous Interpretation is supported in Personal Room meetings. You can enable these settings in site preference. For both Personal Room meetings and scheduled meetings or webinars, hosts can enable or disable the interpretation feature ad-hoc in the meeting. This feature needs to be enabled before setting-up the meeting, to ensure interpreters in the meeting are manageable. Hosts can also set a default language channel for everyone in the meeting (except interpreters) during scheduling or in the meeting.

Slido experience

• Zoom in and out of Presenter mode to see more options and change the size of text.

• Open text – topics or clusters. The type of responses that are being submitted to Open text polls are clustered and organized into categories. Available in Slido Labs and automatically ON for Cisco accounts. Only non-beta customers can’t see this feature.

• New settings available in Webex Sidebar including General, Privacy, Audience Q&A, and Polls. Click and open Advanced settings which bring you to a pop-out of administrator settings.

• Open text - display name feature adds the option to display a name that is attached to an answer. Once the participant decides to add their name it is visible in administration, participant, and present mode.

 

Device enhancements

• Mute the paired device video from Webex Meetings. If you join a meeting using a paired device, you can mute or unmute the device video from Webex App or alternatively, hide or show the content share on the device.

Post-meeting experience

• Chapters in the recording video. If you are using Webex Meetings and Webinars you can now add chapters to a recording and share them with others. This makes it faster and easier to view recordings that are longer in duration.

Webex Meetings for iOS and Android

• Accessibility improvement for join and sign in. Accessibility improvement have been made for join and sign in experience on meetings mobile app.

Webex Meetings for Android

• Can share PDF file in Android mobile and tablet. Similar to desktop, Android mobile and tablet users can now share PDF file from their device.

For administrators

• Administrators can enable Allow host account signup on Control Hub managed sites. This feature has been available for site administrator-managed sites and is now also available on Control Hub managed sites. This feature allows people without an account on the site to request a host account. 
• Deprecation of Creating New Site Admin Managed Sites. Today, you can provision a new site via Site Admin or Control Hub.  As part of ongoing initiative to manage all Webex sites from Control Hub, Site Admin option will be deprecated.

*This feature is available on a delayed release cycle. Check status.webex.com/maintenance to see when it’s available on your site.

Go here for more details on what's new in the 42.9 Latest release.

Impact description and actions

• Review the above features and inform your users.
• Follow 'Next steps' below.

Next steps

Refer to the below resources for support through this upgrade process:

• Customer Monthly Update for 42.9 
• Frequently Asked Questions
• Latest Channel Guide for IT Managers

We recognize that you may require software to remain on lockdown for compliance with regulations or internal policies. Please submit your request by completing this form.

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