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!

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, follow the instructions in the video below, or 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!

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!

Registration Platform 5.5
Studio 2.0

This month’s release brings some awesome enhancements to the Webex Events platform and the Webex Events Production Studio. Watch the following video for an overview, or keep reading to learn more! 🎉

Custom consent question type and Privacy Report

Silence isn’t consent. When collecting personal data in the digital world, asking for consent establishes a dynamic of respect and trust, protects consumer privacy, and maintains compliance with global privacy regulations. Webex Events Registration now has a custom consent question type for checkout forms to make it easier for you to manage attendee data and privacy and keep a record of explicit consent or refusal.

Add one or more custom consent questions and customize them to fit your needs. This is great when you need to ask questions like, “Would you like to subscribe to our monthly email newsletter?”, “This event will be photographed. Do you grant us permission to capture and use any photos with your likeness for commercial purposes?” or “Do you consent to us sharing your data with a third party for marketing purposes?”, to name a few.

To learn more about custom consent questions, read our article about creating checkout forms and questions.

Collecting data is only helpful if you have a way to analyze that data. That’s why there’s a new Registration export report in town called Privacy Report, and it has all the data you need to easily find out which registrants provided consent or refusal to consent questions. Let this report be your source of truth in handling attendee privacy and data!

To download the report, head to your Registration Metrics page and select Privacy Report from the Export Report drop-down menu.

To learn more about the Privacy Report, read our Webex Events Registration Metrics article.

Activate or deactivate group registration

Speaking of metrics, we’ve crunched the numbers and found that more than 90% of completed Webex Events Registration orders are for a single ticket. Additionally, some organizers may prefer that attendees purchase one ticket per order. Every event is different, so we’ve decided to let event organizers choose whether to restrict registration to one ticket per order or to let registrants purchase multiple tickets in one order.

To manage this setting in the Webex Events platform, go to Registration in your Event navigation bar, click Settings, then General, and activate or deactivate the 'Allow group registration' toggle. You can update this setting at any time if needed, too!

When you deactivate the group registration setting, registrants simply click the ‘Select’ button for the ticket they want to purchase. This removes the step of selecting ‘1’ from the ticket drop-down and improves the registration experience for attendees purchasing single tickets.

💡Keep in mind, this option is active for all current Registrations. The option is inactive for all Registrations activated after June 21, 2023.

To learn more, read our Registration Settings Overview article.

Webex Events Production Studio layout animation

Producing a live stream can involve an intricate dance of switching layouts and managing which speakers and shared content are on stage at any time during the stream. With all the activity on stage, we’ve updated Webex Events Production Studio layout transitions to seamlessly adjust as you add, arrange, and remove speakers and content. This subtle enhancement creates a visually pleasing effect that’s smooth as silk. Here’s a GIF to illustrate:

Want to learn more about Webex Events Production Studio? Our Introduction to Webex Events Production Studio article is the perfect place to start. 🌈

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