hi everyone kevin here today i want to show you how you can both get and also use cisco’s webex meetings if this is your first time using webex meetings i’m going to walk you through step by step how you can start taking advantage of it first off what is webex meetings it’s a video conferencing solution that allows you to both talk and see others it works whether you’re meeting with one other or even thousands of others you can also share your screen and content with others so let’s say you have a powerpoint presentation you can very easily share it with your audience if someone in your audience is unable to make it you can also record the session for them to access after the fact webex meetings works regardless of what type of pc you have if you’re on windows mac or linux you’ll be able to use it you can also use it on the go whether you have an iphone or an android phone there’s a lot of competition in the space you might have heard of microsoft teams or zoom video conferencing webex meetings is one of the leaders in the space and they offer an extremely feature rich video conferencing solution and best of all it’s backed by the security and privacy of a large company like cisco if there’s a section of this video that interests you more feel free to use the chapters down below to simply jump ahead to it otherwise we’re going to kick off with how you can get webex meetings here i am on my pc and first off i want to show you how you can get webex meetings open up your web browser and head to the website webex.com if you don’t yet have a webex account it’s entirely free to sign up on the webex home page click on the button here that says sign up now it’s free when you click on sign up all you need is to enter an email address it truly is free you don’t have to enter any payment information you might be wondering well what’s the limitation of a free account free accounts are limited to 50 minutes of meeting time if you don’t want to deal with any limitations on the homepage of webex you can click on plans and pricing and there are a variety of plans that give more meeting time and they have many other additional features and functionality and you can evaluate which one is the best for you if you already have a webex meetings account maybe it’s because your work or your school provides you with an account up on the top right hand corner you can click on the sign in text when you click on sign in you have two different options you can either sign into webex meetings which is the video conferencing solution or you could sign into webex teams teams is a collaborative space for teams to come together and work together today we’re looking at webex meetings so i’m going to sign in to meetings once you click on sign in you’ll be prompted to type in your email address type in the email address that you have an account for next you’ll be prompted to enter your password in go ahead and enter your password once you’re done entering your password click on next we’re now logged in to the authenticated page for webex meetings and we’re making some good progress and we’re pretty close to either joining a meeting or hosting a meeting i want to walk through what some of the functionality is here and what you can do with webex meetings at the very top of the page you can join a meeting by typing in a meeting code if let’s say a host provided you with a meeting code you’ll have it you could paste it in here and then join a meeting if you are a host and you want to figure out how to get a meeting code hold on and i’ll get to it in just a moment right under there there is a section here called kevin stratford’s personal room every webex meetings account has its own personal room the way to think of this is this is a place you can come together and meet with others for impromptu meetings when i click over here on this copy icon this will copy details of the meeting and then i can send this to others to join my impromptu meeting for instance i could send an email maybe a text message or a messenger message however i want to communicate with others i can send them my meeting room information here for instance i have an email message open and i’m going to paste in the content that i just copied you’ll see here that there’s a hyperlink for the meeting if i send this email off to others they’ll be able to click on this and that’ll allow them to join my meeting over on the right hand side you see a number this is the meeting number so if you type that meeting number in this section here you’ll be able to join the meeting along with that you’ll see an ellipses right here under my personal room if i click on this here too you’ll see the meeting number appear if you want someone to be able to join the meeting you can also share this number with them and you’ll enter that number in this field here and that’ll also allow someone to join your meeting let’s say that you shared this information with someone else and now you just want to kick off the meeting with them well it’s pretty simple to do all you need to do is click on the start a meeting button and this will drop you in the meeting if you click on this drop down you can choose whether you want to use the desktop app or whether you want to use the web app by default it goes to the desktop app and i recommend that experience and in a moment i’ll show you how you can get the desktop app not all meetings are going to be impromptu meetings you might want to schedule a meeting ahead of time to schedule a meeting there’s a button right here that says schedule let’s click on that to see how it works this opens up the schedule a meeting interface and i can now add all of the details for my meeting in the first drop down i can choose the meeting type and there are only two types for me i can either go with a standard meeting or i could go with end-to-end encryption for the voice if i want a little bit of extra security i’m going to leave it set on the default up here i can type in the meeting topic or the subject of the meeting i’m going to type something in here i typed in kevin cookie company brainstorming session i want to come together with some of my co-workers and we’ll figure out some great ideas for our company down below there’s a meeting password associated with the meeting and this was just auto-generated down below this is where i can set the date and time of my meeting if i click on this i could choose the day the time and also the duration now if you have a free account the meeting will be limited to 50 minutes with a paid account you can set a meeting up to 24 hours i hope none of you are going to meet for that long because that’d be a really long meeting but you do have that functionality and you’re able to do that down below i can set this as a recurring meeting so let’s say i want to come together with this brainstorming session and we want to meet weekly i can click on recurrence and i can choose how frequently it should reoccur for now i’m going to go with a one-off meeting and we’ll see how effective this meeting is underneath this is where i can start adding other people to my meeting to have a meeting you want others to join so this is where you should enter some email addresses in i’m going to type in a few names and invite some others to my meeting once you’re satisfied with all of the different settings you can click on schedule and that’ll schedule the meeting on your calendar i’ve now finished scheduling the meeting and here i can review all of the details of my meeting that i scheduled if i click on this green button here this will allow me to join the meeting and i also see all of the meeting information down below here again i see the meeting number that i can provide my attendees to be able to join my meeting up above i can copy all the meeting details to invite others i can also go back and maybe i made a mistake somewhere maybe i want to reschedule and choose a new time i can edit the meeting invitation i can also cancel the meeting and lastly i can add it to my calendar let’s say that i’m using outlook i can put it on my outlook calendar now that we’ve scheduled a meeting this is kevstrat three’s email that he received and here you can see that it’s a meeting invitation and i can accept it and add it to my calendar in microsoft outlook within the meeting invitation itself here i see the meeting invitation i see the meeting number and here too as an attendee i can simply click on join meeting and this will add me to the webex meeting it’s extremely simple and easy to get other people to join your meeting and if you’re an attendee it couldn’t be any easier to join a meeting back here in the meeting details if i click on back to meeting list or i could click over on meetings on the left hand side this will show me all of my upcoming meetings here i can see that i have two meetings coming up and they’re both brainstorming sessions for the kevin cookie company and here too i could very easily click on start to join a meeting we’re going to join the meeting in just a moment but before we do that i wanted to show one additional thing first over on the left hand side if we click on downloads this will show a number of different downloads that we can get for webex meetings the first one is one that i would highly recommend this is the cisco webex desktop app the desktop app gives you the full functionality of webex meetings especially if you’re going to be hosting a meeting or sharing content i’d recommend getting the desktop app there’s one item called the productivity tools and by installing this this will allow you to schedule meetings directly from microsoft outlook so you don’t have to come to this interface here to be able to schedule a meeting we have now scheduled a meeting we have the desktop app why don’t we jump into a meeting and see what the capabilities are i’m in the meetings view here and i see my two upcoming meetings i’m going to join the first brainstorming session and let’s click on the start button this kicks off the meeting and i now have two options i can open the desktop app because i’ve installed that if i want to use the desktop app all the time i can check this box and then click on open webex meeting and it’ll by default always use the desktop app if however you chose not to install the desktop app or you just want to use it in your web browser you can also click on this text down below that says join from your browser i’m going to use the desktop app since that’s where all of the functionality is so i’m going to click right here all right look at this this launches up the preview interface for webex meetings this allows me to configure both my audio and my video before joining a meeting how many meetings have you joined where someone comes in and their audio is not working properly or they don’t yet have their video on this allows us to make sure everything is in working order let’s see what we could do here in the bottom left hand corner you’ll see a button that says mute with this you could turn your microphone on or off let’s say that you’re joining a session that’s already in progress you probably want to mute your microphone before joining over on the right hand side of the mute button if we click on this carrot icon this will allow us to choose what speaker we want to use and what microphone we want to use especially if you have a number of microphones or a number of speakers you likely want to configure which one you prefer to listen and also speak through over in the center i also have the option to stop my video or i can restart my video if i click on the carrot here too especially if you have a number of cameras hooked up to your computer you can define which camera you want to use now one other fun thing that i want to show up in the top right hand corner you can change your background so if i click on this this is what’s referred to as a virtual background i can set a blurry background and so that kind of blurs out the background a little bit i could also choose other picture backgrounds so this is an executive office look at this i’m truly a baller now i’ve got a nice it looks like i’m probably on the 50th or 60th floor of some building but this is uh i don’t know maybe i need to upgrade my office a little more but this looks pretty good additionally you can also upload your own photos so let’s say that you want to be on the starship enterprise or you want to be in an underwater hotel wherever you want to be you can click on this plus button to add your very own background image i’m going to stick with this executive background i think this is kind of a fun one let’s go with this and once we’re all done with these different settings you can test out your speaker and your microphone to make sure that everything’s working properly especially if you’re just starting out with webex meetings i’d recommend doing that alright so we are set now to join the meeting let me click on start meeting i’m now in a meeting and it turns out that nestor has already joined the meeting by default i see the participant list right up here on the right and here i can see nestor i want to briefly walk through what we can do when we’ve joined a meeting down in the bottom we’re going to start over in the bottom left hand corner and just like on the previous screen i have the same control that allows me to either mute or unmute myself and once again i could choose what microphone or what speakers i want to use the same with the video as well i could turn my video on or off depending on whether i want people to see me maybe i had a rough night and i don’t want people to see me on the video well i turn off the video then this is one of the most valuable things about webex meetings i can share content with others let’s click on this to see what we can do this opens up the share content dialog and i can share all sorts of things i can share my entire screen or i could share a specific window on my computer so whether it’s let’s say a onenote or a powerpoint presentation i could go through and choose the appropriate content down at the bottom i could also share a file i could open an application and share that or i could open up a new whiteboard why don’t we just test this out and first off i’ll start by sharing my screen now one thing to note before we do that you’ll also see that there’s this drop down at the top by default it’s set to optimize text and images so if you’re sharing things like a document a spreadsheet a powerpoint presentation you likely want to choose this one this will ensure the best quality for things that aren’t fast moving if let’s say you’re going to share maybe a youtube video maybe my channel whatever type of fast moving or video type content you want to share choose this the quality will be a little lower but it’ll optimize for video or fast moving content i’m going to select just text and images for now and i’m going to share my screen this now shares my desktop if i go up to the top here i see text that says you’re sharing your screen if i click on this drop down i’ll be able to see what all of my attendees can see that’s a pretty nice feature a lot of times people say hey can you see what i’m sharing this way you know exactly what others can see up at the top if i hover over again i have all of these different controls available to me for instance let’s say i need to do something quickly and i don’t want my attendees to see it i can pause my screen sharing and then i can do what i need to do and then resume the screen sharing here if i click on share i can share other types of content so let’s say for instance i was sharing a window and now i want to share a different window i can easily toggle between different types of content that i’m sharing here i could assign other people to take over the sharing session once again i can mute unmute start or stop my video and here too i could also kick off a recording now one thing that i really love about screen sharing is you can also annotate your screen it’s built in directly to webex meetings if i click on annotate this opens up a whole bunch of annotation controls on the side of my screen and so i could draw on my screen i could type on my screen i could insert shapes on my screen i have all of these different tools i can save the annotation and once i’m all done i can close the annotation i’m back in the main interface and i want to show you one more awesome type of content that you can share and for that let’s go back to share content and at the very bottom here we can also share a whiteboard let’s click on this i’m now in a blank whiteboard and just like the name implies i can doodle and i could add information to this whiteboard so i could add lines i could i could scribble around and other attendees can also do that as well so we could have a collaborative session especially for a brainstorming session and this is very valuable i’m now back in the main interface and down at the very bottom i can also record this meeting when i click on record it’ll allow me to record it as an mp4 on my desktop if you’re part of one of the more advanced plans you also have the option to save directly to the cloud so you don’t have to leave it on your computer the choice is yours over next to the record button i also have some additional options one of the interesting ones is i can lock the meeting so let’s say i’m a teacher and we have a start time of 9am if you’re not there at 9am i’m going to lock the door so you can’t join anymore so you can do all sorts of things let’s say that you want to bring someone in and the meetings already started you can invite or even remind people and here again they make it very easy to get the meeting link so even once the meeting has started you can still send it out to people to get them to join your meeting now over on the right hand side you can see all of my participants this is a fairly small meeting i just have nestor meeting with me but it was nice of nesser to join because i wanted to demonstrate some of the functionality that i have if i hover over nestor i can right click on him and i have all sorts of different options i can mute i can unmute i can also chat with nestor i can move them to the lobby if i want to boot them out for a moment and this one’s very interesting and maybe something that teachers will use if students are disruptive but you can expel someone from the webex meeting now that really does sound like an education term where you’re going to expel a student but you could boot someone out if you’re the host and you no longer want them contributing now one thing that’s interesting as well is down in the bottom right hand corner you can chat and when i click on chat here i can type in whatever message i want so i’ll say hello everyone not only can i talk to everyone but in this drop down list i can also choose specific individuals to chat with so let’s say maybe someone’s being disruptive or maybe i want to follow up with someone within the session i can chat with just one other person and have a one-on-one conversation along with being able to chat with others i also have control over what this real estate up here looks like if i move my mouse up here currently it’s in a grid view where i’ll see all the different attendees within a grid if i click here i can also change it to the active speaker now everyone’s currently muted so the active speaker showing up as nester but i can have the active speaker show up within this real estate so i can configure what this display looks like and what content i’m focused on this shows you all of the fundamentals of webex meetings like i said in the intro it’s an extremely feature rich product in fact if you go to these top menus across the top there are many different settings that you can set but what i wanted to do is show you the fundamentals to help you get started now once you’re all done with your meeting and you want to exit there’s a big red button in the bottom that allows you to either end or leave the meeting i want to briefly talk about what the difference is between those two different options if i click on end meeting this will end it for all of the different participants now let’s say i’m hosting a meeting but i need to leave early but i want the discussion to continue in that case i can click on leave meeting and all leave but the session will continue so i have those two different options for now though i’m going to click on end meeting all right well that was a quick look at how you can use webex meetings if this video helped you please give it a thumbs up if you want to see future videos like this hit that subscribe button that way you’ll get a notification anytime new content like this comes out and lastly if you want to see me cover any other videos in the future leave a comment down below and i’ll add it to my list of videos to create alright well that’s all i had for you today i hope you enjoyed and i hope to see you next time bye you