Event App 41.0
Production Studio 2.5.0

Today's update is all about live streaming improvements — two for Production Studio speakers and hosts and one for attendees tuning in to live streams on their iOS or Android devices. Keep reading or watch the video below to learn more. Let's dive in! 🏊

Production Studio keyboard shortcuts

Hosts and speakers now have access to convenient navigation and feature activation with 50 unique keyboard shortcuts in the Studio. With simple key combinations, control your mic and camera, control layouts, banners, and media, navigate the side menu, and more.

In the Studio, an item's shortcut appears when you hover over it, making it easy to learn shortcuts in context. 

If gradual learning isn't your thing, open the Studio's Settings page with Alt + Shift + 6 (PC) or ⌥ ⇧ 6 (Mac) and click the new 'Keyboard shortcuts' tab to read the full list of shortcuts.

Don't like a shortcut? Want to control your mic and camera with one shortcut? Simply click a current shortcut, then enter your own key combination to set a new one. Shortcuts can contain up to 3 keys and must start with 1-2 modifier keys, such as Shift and Option, and end with a letter, number, or symbol. Your custom shortcuts are stored in your browser cache, so you can set them once and they'll "follow you" in any Studio.

Learn more in our article about getting started with the Webex Events Producton Studio.

Production Studio Microsoft Edge support

To round out today's improvements to the Webex Events Production Studio, the Studio now supports Microsoft Edge for hosts and speakers on all devices. 'Nuff said!

Mobile App background audio play

Previously, the Webex Events App and Branded Apps required attendees to keep the app open to stream audio and video content. This meant that attendees couldn't interact with other apps or lock their phones without interrupting the stream.

Today, we've added continuous audio playback capabilities on both iOS and Android devices when attendees switch to different apps or lock their screens while a video is playing. This means that if an attendee is viewing a video and decides to check their email or lock their phone, the audio will continue to play without any disruption.

This improvement adds media controls to device lock screens and notification shades, making it easy for attendees to control playback and reopen the app.

Please note that background audio functionality is only available for Webex Events streaming products including the Production Studio, Simulive, Video on Demand (VoD), and the RTMP player.

That's all for today, folks! Here are your next steps:

1. Explore these new changes on the Webex Events platform
2. Subscribe to our YouTube channel for weekly updates, tips, and more!

It's gonna be – wait, it IS May! This month, we've rolled out a series of changes to simplify and improve your experience with managing teams, members, and credits:

• Attendee-based usage instead of product credit-based pricing
• Organizations
• New team and organization management interface

Learn all about these changes in the video below, or keep reading!

Attendee-based usage instead of product credit-based usage

For our Webex Suite Enterprise (Suite EA) customers, this change isn't a change at all. For everyone else, we've now transitioned away from product credit-based usage tracking for most products. How does it work now? Glad you asked!

• Attendees - With today's change, every Webex Events customer has a limit to the number of attendees who can join their Events, and you no longer have to use a Registration, Event App, or Onsite credit to use these features. 
• Streaming -Another change we've introduced is streaming hours. Instead of consuming one Streaming credit when you activate Webex Events Streaming, RTMP, or Simulive in your Event, streaming usage is now based on how long attendees watch your live streams. Here are two examples:
  • If 10 attendees watch a 1-hour stream for the entire hour, then 10 streaming hours are deducted.
  • If one of the 10 attendees only watches for 30 minutes, then 9.5 streaming hours are deducted.
• Branded Apps and Lead Retrieval - These products remain unchanged from before.

We know this is a big transition, so don't hesitate to talk to your Webex Events contact if you have questions. Our amazing team has been working hard behind the scenes to prepare for this change, and you may already have received specific communication from us about the transition. All existing customers have been transitioned to the new organization and plan structure, and all your teams and team members will remain in place and associated with their correct Events.

Introducing Organizations

Previously, multiple teams in the same organization weren’t linked to each other, so it was difficult for administrators to control and oversee usage at a high level.

We’ve now introduced Organizations. Instead of needing to be added to all teams in the organization, Organization admins only belong to the Organization team. This automatically gives visibility and control over all other teams and Events within the Organization. Admins can create, edit, and remove teams, allocate attendees and add-on credits to teams, and invite or remove team members.

If you have access to multiple organizations, click your current Organization name in the top right corner of the screen to switch between them.

Editors in the Organization team can view all teams and their Events, though they can't edit teams, members, or plans.

New organization and team management interface

In addition to the new Organizations, we've also improved the team creation and management interface! Your organization now has a single Organization team, and you can create as many sub-teams as you need. When you create a team, you can assign a limit to how many attendees the new team's Events can have from the organization's pool. Or don't create any extra teams and just use the Organization team for everything!

Inviting, editing, and removing team members will also be improved with an updated interface that lets you invite multiple team members at the same time!

Notable changes for Webex Suite EA customers

If you're a Webex Suite EA customer, there are a few additional changes that affect you with this release:

• The new Organization teams are synchronized with Control Hub (CH), so all administrators from CH are Organization admins in Webex Events. With this update, members of the Organization team will be able to create Events.
• External attendees for Communities and Event Apps are no longer be counted separately! Instead, they're now combined and counted from the same pool of 10 external attendes per Knowledge Worker (KW). External attendees are now counted based on their creation time rather than the time they joined the Event App.
• The logic for the Branded App, Lead Retrieval, and Streaming hours will remain unchanged and usage will be displayed on the 'Organization settings' page.
• We now no longer roll over any credits, and all credits will reset on the term end date.

Improved button color contrast

In our continual efforts to be as accessible as possible to everyone, we’ve made a little change with big impact. You’ll notice that all buttons throughout the platform now have a black background with white text. This greatly improves their color contrast, making the platform more accessible for users with color blindness or low vision.

We’re working on even more accessibility improvements, so stay tuned!

That's all for today, folks! Learn about all of these changes in our newly updated article about team, member, and credit management.

If you have any questions or concerns, don't hesitate to talk to our support team or your Webex Events contact. Remember to subscribe to these updates so you don't miss any news. Subscribe to our YouTube channel for weekly updates, tips, and more!

Production Studio: 2.3
Event App: 39.0

We’ve got a few announcements today that should pair nicely with your morning (or evening) coffee. Watch the following video, or keep reading to learn more. 📚

Taglines in Webex Events Production Studio

Hi, I’m Emily! My pronouns are she/they, and I’m particularly excited to share this new addition to the Webex Events Production Studio with you. With this month’s release, Webex Events Production Studio producers and speakers can now add a tagline that appears under their name. This is a great place for participants to enter their pronouns, profession, or company name. Or, why not add all three, as long as the tagline is under 50 characters!

Participants simply add a tagline in the ‘Tagline (Optional)’ field in the Studio’s “green room” before entering the Studio. If they need to edit their tagline after entering the Studio, they can either select the Edit info option in the Speaker settings menu on their speaker card, or they can make changes from the Personal Information tab in Settings.

Taglines are optional, and producers have the power to control whether to include taglines under a speaker’s name on the stage. Simply click Settings, then the General tab, and check or uncheck the Include taglines option. For existing Studios, taglines are deactivated by default, and for Studios created as of April 25th, 2024, taglines are activated automatically.

⭐ Keep in mind, the ‘Show participant names’ option in General Settings must be activated to show taglines.

For more information about this and other Studio features, read our Getting Started with Webex Events Production Studio article.

Export Production Studio speaker links

We also made a convenient improvement to help producers quickly find and share Webex Events Production Studio speaker links with speakers. If your event has multiple live stream Sessions, you’ll love this. You can now easily retrieve speaker links for all Studios by exporting Sessions from the Webex Events platform. Simply download the Sessions export and find the links in the ‘RTMP List’ sheet under the Speaker Links column.

For more information on exporting content from Webex Events, read our Import or Export Data from Webex Events article.

Webex Events Academy is now part of Webex Academy! 

We're excited to share that Webex Events Academy has merged with Webex Academy. This will be the same free platform you're used to with courses, on-demand videos, and interactive walkthroughs to help you gain event knowledge. Plus, you'll now be able to access learning content for all other products in the Webex Suite in one place.

To ensure your progress from Webex Events Academy transfers seamlessly to Webex Academy, read instructions in the Webex Events Resources and Support article on the Webex Events knowledge base.

That's all for today, folks! Here are your next steps:

• Explore these new changes on the Webex Events platform
• Subscribe to our YouTube channel for weekly updates, tips, and more!

Over the last eight years, Webex Events (formerly Socio) has become the leading end-to-end events management platform. We have successfully delivered on our mission to bring people together by powering your in-person, virtual, and hybrid events throughout the industry's most transformative and defining periods.

Starting April 30, 2025, Webex Events will embark on a new chapter as we shift our focus to exclusively supporting Webex Suite Enterprise Agreement (Suite EA) customers. This strategic transformation will allow us to dedicate all our resources to enhancing the Webex suite of products and services.

Starting on April 29, 2024, we will no longer sell standalone products and services outside of the Webex Suite Enterprise Agreement (Suite EA). However, we will continue to provide existing customers with the same standards of care and support until the end of their agreements.

Our commitment to providing the world's best end-to-end event management platform remains our north star, and we look forward to strengthening our connection with Suite customers and partners to unlock new possibilities and future innovation.

Here’s to the future of seamless, integrated, and impactful events! Thank you for being part of our journey.

Learn more about these changes in our Subscriptions & purchasing options changes FAQ, and chat with our support team or your Webex Events contact if you have any additional questions.

Webex Events Platform 6.5
Event App 37.0

In today's update, we're bringing you two small yet highly-requested improvements for the Event App. Watch the video below, or keep reading to learn more! 📖

Web App Collapsible Left Menu

Before now, the features list on the left side of the Web App was always visible, whether attendees were watching a live stream, joining a video room, or exploring a speakers or sponsors feature.

With today's release, attendees can now click a single button to collapse and then re-expand the features list so the feature content they're viewing takes center stage!

As always, the right side panel that appears in some features is still collapsible, and we've moved the collapse/expand button to the middle of the panel to match the new button on the left.

Internally Link to Features from Announcements and Banners

Internal links connect features and feature items you've created in your Webex Events App, like linking a Session to a speaker or sponsor. This provides your attendees with robust, intuitive navigation throughout the app. One highly-requested upgrade to this feature that we've received is the ability to link to an entire feature.

Today, we've added the ability to link Announcements and Banners to any feature in the Event App!

When you add an internal link to an announcement or banner, typing the name of a feature such as 'sponsors' reveals all items in the sponsors list with the feature at the top. Additionally, all items now show the name of their associated feature on the right side of the selection drop-down.

This improvement gives you more options to lead attendees to general areas instead of individual items within features. This means more intentional and actionable announcements and banners. Want to promote the Event Game with an announcement? Link the announcement to the Game feature so attendees can click to tap to go right there. Want to promote your in-app help center in a banner? Easy!

Important things to know

• Announcements and banners can only link to a single feature or item
• Feature items can only link to other feature items

Read our article about Internal Links for complete information.

That's all for today, folks! Here are your next steps:

• Explore these new changes on the Webex Events platform
• Subscribe to our YouTube channel for weekly updates, tips, and more!

Webex Events platform: 6.3
Event App: 36.0
Webex Events Production Studio: 2.1.3
Onsite: 2.1

This month’s release comes with some juicy improvements to Registration and the Onsite App, plus the Webex Events Production Studio now supports GIFs! 🎉  Watch the video below, or keep reading to learn more! 📖

Registration ticket and order management enhancements

This month’s cornucopia of Registration enhancements hone in on streamlining ticket and order management and reducing distractions for your registrants. 

New payment options to publish Registration

Previously, we required you to connect to a Stripe account to publish Registration if you selected ‘Paid’ during Registration setup. Now, you can select one or more of three options — Stripe, Invoice, and Check — to publish paid Registration. 

Ticket availability and visibility

Webex Events Registration now has an option to automatically hide a ticket from the Registration page when it’s sold out, past the close date, or isn’t on sale yet.

Where can you find this new option? Simply edit the ticket, expand the Advanced Settings section, and select ‘Hide ticket when unavailable” from the Visibility drop-down. 

Share a direct ticket link

This nifty new option in Ticket settings lets you share a unique link for each ticket after you publish Registration. When registrants click the link, the ticket is the only option on the Registration page — no distractions, no confusion.

Simply go to the Tickets page in the Webex Events platform, click the ticket’s Settings (⋯) icon, select Share link to copy the unique URL, then send it to the people who need it. 🔗 

Hide the option to reserve for someone else

You can now choose to hide the option to let purchasers enter separate contact information during registration. This is helpful if you don’t expect registrants to purchase tickets on behalf of others. Simply head to General Settings and deactivate the Accept purchaser information option. Easy peasy!

Filter orders by ticket

We want to give you the tools to manage orders efficiently and find what you need quickly. That’s why you can now filter tickets on the Orders page by Ticket Name, in addition to Status, Ticket Type, and Promo Code.

More notable Registration improvements

• After publishing Registration, you can now delete the tickets no one has registered with. 
• People have sometimes been confused when a ticket shows "Closed" on the Registration page before its scheduled 'Sales open' date. Now, the button says, “Coming Soon” until the ticket becomes available.
• On the Tickets page in the Webex Events platform, tickets that are sold out, past the close date, or yet to be opened have a status of “Closed” to help you quickly discern which ones are currently on sale.
• When an attendee enters an access code on the Registration page, the associated ticket moves to the top of the list and is highlighted briefly. No more scrolling to find the right ticket!
• After clicking “Read More” to expand a ticket description, attendees can now click “Show Less” to collapse those descriptions.

To learn more about all of these registration features, read our Create Tickets article and our Registration Settings Overview article. 

Webex Events Onsite improvements

Sometimes the Onsite App has trouble finding a printer automatically even though it's connected to the same router as the check-in device. To overcome this problem, you can now choose to enter the printer's IP address manually. With this alternative in your toolkit, check-in and badge printing is more seamless than ever.

When attendees arrive at your event check-in desk, a locked iPad is an inconvenience at best and a barrier to entry at worst. To ensure your iPad doesn’t take a nap during check-in, we’ve introduced a new setting in the Onsite App that prevents the iPad from auto-locking, and it’s active by default. 

If you want to turn the setting off, open the Onsite App’s Settings, tap Appearance & Display, then deactivate Prevent Auto-Lock.  

To learn more, read our article about Onsite Event Check-in hardware setup.

Reorder External Links and Attachments

A well-ordered Event App is a great Event App. That's why we now let you drag and drop External Links and Attachments to rearrange them in the following feature items:

• Sessions
• Speakers
• Sponsors and Exhibitors
• Custom List
• Single Item

GIFs in Webex Events Production Studio

We know how important branding is for your live streams — your logos, backgrounds, and images aren’t an after-thought. They tell your story, showcase your sponsors, and give your viewers a taste of your unique style. To help you create an even more dynamic, engaging, and downright fun experience for your attendees, we’re excited to share that you can now upload GIFs to the Webex Events Production Studio! 

Grab GIFs from the internet or craft your own using your favorite GIF maker and upload them as logos, Images, or backgrounds.

To learn more about all the fun branding opportunities for your live stream, read our Getting Started with Webex Events Production Studio article. 

That's all for today, folks! Here are your next steps:

• Explore these new changes on the Webex Events platform
• Subscribe to our YouTube channel for weekly updates, tips, and more!

Platform 6.2
Event App 35.0
Studio 2.1.2

Trick or treat! 🎃 🍬 🍂

Today, we have one big treat, one small treat, and a farewell. Watch the video below or keep reading to learn all about it!

Collaboration forms

Ok, big treat first — like, full-size-candy-bar big. We're thrilled to announce a very highly requested feature: Collaboration for speaker, sponsor, and exhibitor Event App profiles!

Gone are the days of endless back and forth emails with speakers, sponsors, and exhibitors. With Collaboration Forms, simply fill in some basic information for each profile, then invite collaborators to independently manage their profiles in the Event App. It's a game-changer!

Setting up collaboration forms is spooky easy! 🎃

1. First, add a speaker, sponsor, or exhibitor profile, filling in basic information and fields collaborators can't control, such as location, category, and booth size.
2. Next, scroll down to the 'Collaboration' section and select the options you want your collaborators to edit or add information to, such as their name, profile icon, description, attachments, and more. You can even allow them to add custom button text and links for attendee calls to action.
   
   
3. Once you've configured the form options, simply enter the collaborator's email address and craft a personalized message. Click Save changes, and an email with a unique link to the collaboration form will be sent to the collaborator. It's that easy!

When a collaborator clicks the collaboration link in their email invitation, they can start editing information right away with no password required. If they need to add information gradually or update something, they can click the link at any time to make edits to previously submitted information.

But that's not all! We've made it super easy for you to manage collaboration. Use the new columns on each feature page to track whether the invitation was sent or whether the collaborator has submitted changes. You also have the option to send reminders, revoke collaboration, or reactivate collaboration as needed.

We're so excited to drop this much-requested feature into your goody bags so you can spend less time doing data entry and more time crafting amazing Event App experiences. Happy collaborating!

For complete details about collaboration forms, read our Set Up and Use Collaboration Forms article.

Privacy and Consent page

With the recent addition of Privacy & Consent type questions in Webex Events Registration, it’s important to give attendees visibility into and control over their responses.

To make those consent questions a little less scary, we've introduced a brand new menu option in the Web App, the Webex Events App, and Branded Apps where attendees can review and modify their responses to consent type questions after they complete their ticket purchase. 

In the Web App, attendees click their profile image, then select the new Privacy & Consent option. In the Webex Events Mobile App or Branded Apps, attendees simply tap the new lock icon at the top of the screen.

The Privacy & Consent page opens in the attendee's default browser.

If attendees want to change a response, they simply select their preferred option and click Save. No tricks. 👻

💡 Keep in mind, Privacy and Consent type questions can't currently limit attendee access to any Webex Events features or products. Enforcing limitations based on attendee consent is up to you — for now. 😉

Read our article about Registration Questions to learn more about adding Privacy and Consent type questions.

Communities retirement

Like that beloved Halloween costume you've worn for years, a time comes when you have to put something special away for good. Today, we're retiring our Communities product due to low usage and high maintenance cost. We've already been in touch with our customers who have existing communities, and here are the details we shared:

• Any customer with an existing Community will continue to have access to manage their Communities and welcome members. Communities now appear at the top of the My Events page.
• Communities can no longer be created or cloned.
• Branded Apps will still have the Community section if there is a community available.
• Webex Suite customers can still use and create Communities. 

If you have any questions about this change, chat with our support team.

That's all for today, folks! Head over to the Webex Events platform and explore these new changes for yourself. 

Today's 'What's New' update is a little different. Instead of trumpeting our successes, we're eating a slice of humble pie. 🥧

Last week, we announced several changes, including a couple related to Branded Apps. One of those changes was "Branded App Event visibility improvements". In short, we changed Events' visibility in Branded Apps based on Event App privacy settings.

We made this change to address some feedback from a small subset of customers. However, thanks to your feedback since then, we realized that we had created a larger problem than we were trying to solve, and we need a different solution. "Fess up and fix it" is our policy when we get things wrong, so we've now rolled back the change to Branded App Event visibility. All other changes introduced in last week's release remain in effect.

You rely on us to help you create amazing event experiences, and we rely on you to tell us when we miss that mark, so thanks to everyone who reached out quickly with feedback on the release! 😍

Platform: 6.1
Event App: 34.0
Studio: 2.1.0

Today's update includes some improvements to a couple of recent releases, a quality of life upgrade for branded app updates, and a change to streaming provider options. Watch the video below and read this post to learn all about the changes!

Widget Item Details

Earlier this year, we introduced embeddable Event App widgets. These widgets let you embed session details, sponsor and speaker lists, and more in your event and partner websites.

We're excited to announce that Sponsor, Speaker, Exhibitor, and Custom List widget items are now clickable, revealing the item's image, title, subtitle, and description in a pop-up!

The pop-up automatically pulls information from your Event, and it updates automatically if you change any of the fields mentioned above — no code update required.

If you’re not already embedding Event App content widgets in your external sites, then now is a great time to start!  Learn more in our article about embedding Event App content with widgets.

Pre-filled Privacy & Consent question options

Getting explicit consent from registrants establishes trust, protects consumer privacy, and maintains compliance with global privacy regulations. Last June, we released a new custom Privacy & Consent question type and Privacy report on the Webex Events platform to help you gather and track registrant consent data. We've added Privacy & Consent question options with pre-filled text to help you create custom consent questions faster.

These pre-filled questions are intended as a starting point for creating certain types of consent questions. Your legal team knows what’s best, so always consult with them for specific wording before you publish questions. 

For more information about creating questions in the Webex Events platform, read our Create Questions article. 

Improved Branded App update notifications

Is it just me, or is it easy to forget to do something that’s not right in front of us? If you can relate, then you’ll appreciate this update! Until today, you had to open the ‘My Apps’ page to find out if any of your Branded Apps needed to be updated. Now, we’ve added a new alert icon next to ‘My Apps’ in the Webex Events platform navigation bar. With this alert, you’ll know right away if a Branded App update is available as soon as you log in to the Webex Events platform.

Remember, keeping your Branded App up to date gives you and your attendees access to the latest features and improves the app experience. What’s more, if your Branded App needs an update, you must start the update process before publishing an Event App to it. 

Even though today's release doesn't require a Branded App update, keep tabs on the new notification so you and your attendees never miss out on the latest and greatest!

Branded App Event visibility improvements (Rolled back)

On 10/3/2023, we rolled this change back. Read the rollback post to learn more.

Not all Branded App users should have access to every event in the app, especially if certain events are intended for exclusive attendees.

Previously, attendees who downloaded a Branded App could easily access every Event App associated with it under ‘Current & Upcoming Events’ — even ones they hadn’t joined yet. With today’s release, only Event Apps with the 'Public' privacy setting are immediately visible in a Branded App. Attendees can't find Event Apps with the Event Code or Invite Only privacy setting until they enter the code or search. This way, if a Branded App user doesn’t know about an event, they won’t find out about it unless you tell them. 🤫

Webex Events Production Studio focus

Since we released our very own Webex Events Production Studio, we've continued to add a steady stream (see what I did there?) of improvements and new features to make it the best integrated streaming solution for any Webex Event. With the Production Studio's rich feature set and proven track record of stability, we now want to hone our focus to this single solution.

As of today, Restream is no longer available for new Event Apps or Communities or for new Sessions or Live Stream features. If you selected Restream as the stream provider in a Session or Live Stream feature before September 28, 2023, you can continue to use the Restream Studio until the Event ends or you select a different stream provider.    

With only one studio solution to focus on, our amazing engineering teams can bring faster enhancements to the Webex Events Production Studio. A single solution also means a more simple, streamlined experience for our customers and support team. To learn more about Webex Events Production Studio, read our Introduction to Webex Events Production Studio article.

That's all for today, folks! Head over to the Webex Events platform and explore these new changes for yourself.