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…

1. Webex Teams Microsoft Planner
2. Webex Teams Microsoft Teams
3. Webex Teams Microsoft Teams
4. Webex Teams Microsoft
5. Webex Teams Microsoft Outlook Integration

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.

Cisco Webex is the leading enterprise solution for video conferencing, webinars, and screen sharing. Web conferencing, online meeting, cloud calling and equipment. Thanks for downloading Cisco Webex Teams. Mio works in the background of your chat apps Send cross-platform messages to colleagues and clients on Slack, Microsoft Teams, or Webex Teams.

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

Phase 1 – Email and Calendar Migration

Webex Teams Microsoft Planner

Microsoft Teams has more extensive features in its free plan than Cisco Webex Meetings. Microsoft Teams and Cisco Webex Meetings have different levels of security but Webex provides better end-users control when it comes to management than Microsoft Teams. You need to consider what your company prioritizes. Hi @PierpaoloRossi-5313. Have you integrated Cisco Webex Device with Microsoft Teams? In my experience, Webex devices and participants with devices in Personal mode invited to a Microsoft Teams meeting can join the meeting directly from their devices with One Button to Push.

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

Webex Teams Microsoft Teams

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.

In the pre-COVID era, the collaboration software market was only growing at a decent pace. In 2020, it grew exponentially when the world was put under lockdown. While stuck in the quarantine, we all diligently used collaboration platforms, more than ever before. It took a pandemic to realize the vital importance of collaboration technology. It has allowed everyone to stay connected in testing times. Be it professional communication or personal ones, it has helped conversations get going. A crop of collaboration platforms became popular overnight including Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Cisco Webex, and more.

All these products were lying under the radar under the gamut of products from their parent companies. Today, these collaboration software drive maximum attention and are flagship products for them.

Interestingly, the two big brands Cisco and Microsoft coming with reputed products: Teams and Webex. How will you determine the best collaboration platform for your organization?

We have already compared Microsoft Teams vs Zoom in our previous posts. In this article, we look to provide a feature comparison of Microsoft Teams and Cisco Webex.

Let us compare the basic features of Teams vs Webex:

Looking at the table above, it seems that both Teams and Webex have all basic features. In other words, no important feature for a smooth collaboration is missing in either of the platforms. Now, we must compare enhanced features by digging deeper into the products to find differentiation.

Teams vs Webex: Telephony feature comparison

One of the standout features in the comparison between Teams vs WebEx is the way telephony solutions are offered on either platform. Microsoft offers Teams with Phone System, a Private Branch Exchange (PBX) solution for businesses with Microsoft 365 for an integrated cloud solution.

Cisco takes a different approach to fit every type of customer requirement: on-premises or one-tenant platforms hosted by a partner, and Webex calling for small and midsize organizations. Cisco’s partners including West, IntelePeer, and ThinkTel offer the PSTN access for Webex.

Teams vs Webex Pricing Comparison

Determining pricing as per the licensing requirements can be a bit perplexing for Teams vs Webex comparison. When we look at the bare minimum pricing to get started with the platform, Microsoft Teams has a clear advantage. Microsoft Teams is also available for free with limited features, allowing anyone to get a taste of it without paying anything. If one gets the bare minimum Microsoft Office 365 subscription (Microsoft 365 Business Basic at $5/user), the features unavailable in the free version can be unlocked. Higher the Office 365 plan, the better the features with Microsoft Teams. Though Cisco Webex also offers a free version, in comparison, Microsoft Teams offers far more generous features in the free version. Cisco Webex’s cheapest plan starts with $13.50 per user per month and calling service add-ons would be priced extra. When you must decide between Teams vs Webex with cost as a factor, Microsoft Teams wins hands down.

Teams vs Webex Security Comparison

When it came to comparing Zoom with Teams, security was a pertinent problem in Zoom. This is the reason many large organizations shied away from using Zoom. But what is the case when comparing Teams vs Webex for security?

Both Teams and Webex are products of the behemoth companies, Microsoft and Cisco, which has zero tolerance for compromise in security. Both Microsoft and Cisco have taken respective steps to strengthen security for Teams and Webex, respectively.

Microsoft Teams comes with Office 365 platform. It enjoys high-level encryption and enterprise-grade security built for the rest of Office 365. Office 365 Enterprise comes with premium security features (eDiscovery, Archiving, Legal Hold, Retention) which will be required for compliance such as HIPAA, GDPR, and more. Overall, Microsoft invests $1 billion every year in its bid for robust security.

Similarly, Cisco Webex Teams has a huge number of certifications that attest to their security promise. Like Microsoft Teams, it has compliance features such as eDiscovery, unique device PINs, idle time, content retention flexibility, and more. Marginally more control for the end-users is available in Webex, while it may be troublesome for uninitiated or IT admins if they have a strict organizational policy as compared to the end-users.

Teams vs Webex Integration with Other Software

Webex Teams Microsoft Teams

Microsoft Teams is tightly integrated with all other Microsoft products due to the Office 365 ecosystem. If you use Microsoft Office along with Teams, it would be smooth user experience. Though Cisco has a long list of applications that can be installed and integrated from the App Hub store, Microsoft Teams is built for better integration with third-party applications.

Microsoft Teams vs Webex: Suggestions or Recommendations?

If you are looking for a simple answer, there is obviously difficult to pick a firm winner because there are a number of factors in selecting the right collaboration platform. Just comparing the fundamental characteristics of Webex vs Teams would not provide a definitive answer. But if we dig deeper to compare the peripheral features such as telephony extensions, security, room format, integration with other software, and pricing would help you decide between Microsoft Teams vs Cisco Webex.

Webex Teams Microsoft

Both Teams and Webex are excellent products coming from technology giants Microsoft and Cisco, respectively. Therefore, it is a tough choice to make. Like all other platforms including Webex, Microsoft Teams caters to all the requirements of a Unified Communications (UC) platform. Microsoft has increasingly pushed for Teams to become the numero uno UC platform in the coming time. This means that it will keep on evolving the product until it gets way better than its competitors. Keeping this perspective in mind, we recommend you opt for Microsoft Teams for the promise of the future.

Get help to get started with Microsoft Teams

Moreover, there are a plethora of Microsoft Partners who can assist you get started with Microsoft Teams with minimum disruptions. Apps4Rent is a Tier 1 CSP and Microsoft Gold Partner, which means we are handpicked by Microsoft itself for offering services and products of Microsoft. You can get started with a basic Office 365 subscription which will also include popular productivity suite such as MS Office along with Teams. Apps4Rent can help you get started with Microsoft Teams in no time. We offer 24/7 real-time support via phone, chat, and email if you have any issues on deployment, on-boarding, and operations.

Webex Teams Microsoft Outlook Integration

If you want any further clarifications or have any questions, feel free to contact us now!