Cisco Webex – ‘How To’ Guide

The purpose of this guide is to provide a basic walk-thru of the following:

• ‘Meet Now’ – Instantly start a meeting using your Webex Personal Room
• ‘Schedule Meeting’ – Booking a meeting with others at future date and time.

Cisco Webex is a ‘cloud’ based service so as long as there is a connection to the internet available you
can use Webex. This means that you do not need to be connected to the VPN in order to use Webex.

In order to join a Webex meeting it is important to know how you are going to join the meeting,
especially where audio is concerned. You can join by calling in on a phone or you can use computer
audio.

For laptop users, the headphone jack is an all-in-one port meaning that it will act as both an audio out
and audio in. If you have earbuds that have an 1/8” jack these will work. Basically, if they work in your
mobile phone to make calls they will work with your laptop. To confirm the jack should have three black
strips, two for the speakers and one for the microphone. A USB headset is another option of you have a
USB port you can use.

For desktop users, a USB headset will work best they are very easy to source.

If you need help choosing a device, please see your local IT Guru for a recommendation.

‘Meet Now’
The ‘Meet Now’ feature in Webex allows you to instantly start a meeting in your ‘Personal Room’ that
others can enter. A meeting invitation is not required, all that is required is that you either send them
the link to your personal room or that they know your personal room URL.

How do I start a meeting using ‘Meet Now’

The most direct way to do this is from Outlook. In Outlook you will see in the ribbon a section
called ‘Webex' and within there are two icons one labeled ‘Meet Now’ and the other labled
‘Schedule Meeting’. Note the location, these will be found in the ‘Home’ area of the ribbon.

Click on the ‘Meet Now’ icon will instantly start your Webex meeting and you will see the
following appear and once you have chosen your audio and video options you click ‘Start
Meeting’ to enter your ‘Personal Room’.
 Cisco Webex – ‘How To’ Guide

How Do Others Join My ‘Personal Room’

Once you have entered your ‘Personal Room’, click on the three vertical ellipsis’ and you can
choose either:

• Invite and remind – This will allow you to send the meeting details to those you specify.
• Copy meeting link – This will copy the meeting url to your clip board then you can paste it
into a chat or an email to send.

What To Do When Asked To Join Someone In Their Personal Room

There are two scenarios in this case:

• They have sent you a link or the meeting details in an email, chat message or by other
means.
• You can manually enter the URL to their ‘Personal Room’ in your browser. All Urban
employees have a ‘Personal Room’ and the url is as follows:

https://urbansystems.webex.com/meet/{Employee}. The {Employee} is always going to be

the first initial of the first name and the last name. Example: Ed Milne is emilne.
 Cisco Webex – ‘How To’ Guide

https://urbansystems.webex.com/meet/emilne is the ‘Personal Room’ for Ed Milne.

Is There A Way To Save These Addresses?

Yes, once you know the URL of someone’s personal room you could bookmark/favorite the URL
in your browser. ‘

One thing to remember is that once you have joined someone in their ‘Personal Room’ the room
is remembered in your Webex account. To access someone’s personal room this way go to
https://urbansystems.webex.com and sign in.

Once you have signed in you will see off to the right a section called ‘Recent Personal Rooms’
and will display the last 5 you have joined. This makes it easy to join the ‘Personal Room’ of
someone you meet with regularly.

‘Schedule Meeting’
You use this when you are going to schedule a meeting at a future date and time. When you click on the
‘Schedule Meeting’ button you are presented with three options:

• Schedule Webex Meeting – this creates a meeting in Webex and generates a random Meeting
ID.
• Schedule Personal Room Meeting – this creates a meeting using your Personal Meeting Room.
This is the recommended best-practice for scheduling a meeting for the following reasons:
o The Meeting ID and URL does not change.
o Anyone with an Urban Systems Webex account can host your meeting if you are not
able to join due to a scheduling conflict or absence.
• Schedule Personal Conference Call – Do Not Use since it does require a direct dial number to be
assigned to the user in our phone system and not everyone has a direct number.

NOTE: When scheduling a meeting it is best to use the recommended best-practice of choosing the
‘Schedule Personal Room Meeting’ option.

What Does The Invite Look Like?

When you choose the ‘Schedule Personal Room Meeting’ option, a ‘New Meeting’ screen will
 Cisco Webex – ‘How To’ Guide

appear. This is like any other meeting invite where you still invite who you want to attend, enter
a title for your meeting, location, etc. The body of the invite will contain the details of your
meeting so your recipients can join.

You can add additional text to the body of the invite above these details