Category: webex guides

Webex Spaces are the bread and butter of Cisco Webex. For new users and for those more experienced we would like to share everything you need to know to make your experience more productive and at the same time, easier.

Table of Contents:

1. What are Webex Spaces?
2. What is the difference between Spaces and Teams in Webex?
3. What are Webex Spaces used for?
4. How to Create a Space in Webex?
5. What things are possible to do within Spaces?
6. Limitations and common issues with Spaces
7. How to add and remove members
8. How to get a complete list of Webex Spaces

1- What are Webex Spaces?

Webex Spaces are a way to manage group chats in Webex. Every UC Vendor addresses the same need but uses different terms.  Skype for Business has Chat Rooms,  Microsoft Teams and Slack have Channels, and Webex has Spaces.

In other words, Spaces are a place to work in collaboration with one or more people. It includes an area for messages, files, whiteboards, and more. If you are looking to see what things are possible to do within Spaces, jump here

2- What is the difference between Spaces and Teams in Webex?

So let’s understand what is a Team in Webex. When needing to create Spaces, sometimes users would like to create different Spaces for the same group of people. To help with better organization, Webex offers the possibility to create a Team where multiple Spaces are hosted.

Practically speaking, Teams are often created with long-term purposes, eg: the design department can create a Team where each Space will refer to a different project. So in this case the team remains the same but as projects finish, so will the need for that Space.

Good advice: host your short-term conversations under Spaces and the rest under Teams.

3- What are Webex Spaces used for?

Webex Spaces are used for collaborating with multiple people at the same time. They allow to send messages and files, do video conferences and contain some other great features such as whiteboards and mentioning in messages.

4- How to Create a Space in Webex?

Creating a Space in Cisco Webex is a super easy task consisting of a few intuitive steps.

To create a new Space:

1. Click  the “+” button next to the top search bar 
2. Select the second option: “Create a Space”
3. Add a name to the Space as well as the users. It can be contacts names or emails
4. Voila! Your new Space is created

Take a look at this simple gif explaining the process:

5- What things are possible to do within Spaces?

As mentioned above, Spaces are collaboration places to work with one or multiple people simultaneously. 

The following things are possible within Spaces

1. Messages
   a. Text messages including emojis
   – Mention people by using the “@” character
   b. Send Pictures (displayed in the conversation)
   c. Send Gifs from Giphy
2. Files
   a. Send any files, some (like spreadsheets and documents) have previews in the message feed
   – At the same time, the files get saved in the File tab for that Space
3. Meetings: Have a meeting (Audio and Video) with the members of that Space
4. Whiteboards: Under the Whiteboard tab, teams can interact with each other in a whiteboard, designed to sketch ideas
5. Schedule: Get all the important events in the Space calendar
6. Messages Actions:
   a. Start a thread from a message: by clicking the ⮪ symbol
   b. Add reaction by clicking the 😊 symbol
   c. Flag message by clicking the 🏴 symbol
   d. Delete message by clicking the 🗑 symbol

6- Limitations and common issues with Spaces and Webex in general

Although Cisco Webex offers a vast amount of options and configurations to collaborate, there are some limitations. Here we bring the most relevant:

-There can only be up to 25 participants in a meeting for Free or Messaging-only Webex Accounts. That limit goes up to 100 for paid Webex Accounts (also Webex calling) and to 200 for Webex Meetings host account or M2 Webex License.

-Data storage for free campaigns is not provided and users need to buy a license for that.

-Controlling communications with external users is not so easy to configure.

-Having a list of all the Spaces in the company for hosts can be a hard or even impossible task.

-Webex doesn’t come with a native data loss prevention filter for messages, files or images.

-Webex also have listed here some common platform issues with their respective workarounds in order to be able to solve them.

7- How to add or remove members from a Webex Space

To add people to a Space simply open the tab in the right and go to the list of people in the Space.

Then click on the blue + symbol that says “Add People”. You can then type the name of the contact or their email address to add

To remove a participant from Space, first of all, you need to be the moderator of the Space. Then, go to the tab on the right on the participant section and click on the three dots (…) at the right of the participant you want to remove, click on “Remove from Space” and it’s done.

7B- How to add or remove members from a Webex Space you are not a member of (or moderator)

In some cases, there is a need to add users to a Space by a user that is not a member of that Space, for example, by help desk user.

It can also be that Space with externals is left with no internal users. This Space may have content that you would like to have control of but is out of reach.

For the following scenarios, SphereShield Governance and Retention Policies offers a variety of features including an easy feature to add and remove members.

8- How to get a complete list of Webex Spaces

Many users in the past have inquired about how to get a list of all the Spaces within a company. 

Suppose you want to run an audit of your organization and be able to quickly identify which and how many Spaces contain external users, or identify which Spaces haven’t been used for a certain time. There is no easy way to view all organization Spaces available because each user can only see the Spaces that he is a member of.

For compliance needs, the officer might need to know in which Spaces a user was a member of in a case of auditing need. The Compliance Officer would also need to know who are the members of specific Spaces.

As we have mentioned, getting a list of all Webex Spaces is not supported yet. The great news is that SphereShield Governance and Retention for Webex can do this very easily, and even more. It just takes 3 steps to get your list:

1- Login to SphereShield Portal and in Webex Governance, go to Space Management.

2- Click in “refresh” so you get the latest data.

3- Now your list is in front of you. You can see the scope (internal/external), which members are in the Space, the last activity, the retention policy.

4- You can click on “export” and get a file with that information for easy processing and sharing.

On top of that, you can perform quick actions such as adding or removing members, blocking or unblocking a Space, and adding tags for organization purposes or adding a special retention policy.

Another very important feature, is that SphereShield lets you perform advanced searches using a vast number of criteria. So, for example, if the person wants to search which Spaces contain external users, or which Rooms haven’t been used for some time.

Here is a snapshot of how it looks

For more information, contact us and a specialist will be in contact with you.