We're excited to announce our new Scenes feature in Webex Events Production Studio that makes stage management even more seamless and powerful! Scenes give producers a structured way to pre-configure distinct stage arrangements. Instead of changing speakers or content on stage click-by-click mid-broadcast, producers can now build scenes in advance and then activate them in one click, keeping transitions fast and polished. 🎬

Creating Scenes

From the new Scenes left-side panel, producers can create, preview, or activate scenes. The left-side panel shows each created scene as a card. There are two types of scenes:

Speaker scenes can include participants, screen shares, presentations, and all other visuals available in the Studio across all layout options.  

Video scenes are for playing video clips (such as countdown timers, intro reels, etc.) as a full-stage moment. There are also two additional specific options for video scenes:

• Loop Video repeats the video until another scene is activated.    
• Auto-next activates the next scene when the video ends. 

Previewing a Scene 

In preview mode, producers can prepare the stage to their liking. Drag and drop the cards to change the order. Use the three-dot menu on each card to rename, duplicate, or remove a scene. Preview the scenes by navigating through the scenes panel or by clicking the left and right arrows that appear beneath the stage. Preview scenes are silent, meaning that while a producer is previewing a scene, the audio is still from the active scene.  

Today's release enhances the stage on our Production Studio 🎥 We're excited to announce our “Fill stage” feature! This is a new stage display option on layouts, designed to help producers maximize every pixel on the stage. Once enabled, the speaker video will be expanded to fill all the space.  

On layout options, we added a new button named “Fill stage (⇧ F).” When activated, in the selected layout, speaker cards will expand to fill the maximum area on stage. When toggling the “Fill stage” feature on or off, the layout preview icons will be updated to illustrate how each layout appears on stage. 

Producers can also manage this new toggle via the keyboard shortcut Shift + F or from the Layouts menu while in full screen mode. The "Fill stage" function applies to all layouts except Solo and Cinema. 

That's all for this April, folks! Learn more about Webex Events Production Studio and explore the stage layouts on the Webex Events platform!

We're wrapping up the year with a sweet and convenient product update. 🍪 Keep reading to learn about shorter Producer and Speaker URLs now in our Production!

We're happy to announce that Studio producer and speaker URLs are now shorter and more user-friendly. This change helps users more easily share the URLs with others. 

The new URL structure is:

• Speaker: https://studio.socio.events/s/{xxxx-10-digits}
• Producer: https://studio.socio.events/p/{xxxx-10-digits}

We included 's' and 'p' in the URLs to help users quickly identify whether it they're for producers or speakers. Also for your convenience, the previous longer URLs still work, so no need to update them! 👍 

That's all for this year, folks! Be sure to explore these new changes on the Webex Events platform! 

November brings great improvements to our one and only Production Studio 🍂. We're excited to announce that Producers are now able to deactivate Studio Recordings as well as clear internal Studio Group chats. Additionally, both speakers and producers can now clear Direct chats.

Deactivate Auto-Recording

By default, live streams are recorded, but producers can now deactivate auto-recording. This is convenient for events with privacy considerations and other scenarios. 

To deactivate auto-recording for a Studio, simply navigate to Settings before going live and select the "General" tab. There, uncheck the option labeled “Auto-generate recordings for live streams." Deactivating auto-recording in one Studio won't impact other Studios within the same event. 

If auto-recording is unchecked, a notification will appear in the "Go Live" confirmation modal to confirm the recording status, as recordings for streams that aren't recorded can't be recovered later.

Clear Studio Chat History

We're happy to announce that Studio users are now able to clear their internal Studio chat history, including both Group and Direct chats. This new improvement is very useful to host multiple streams as Producers can start new chats with speakers.  

By clicking on the three-dot (⋯) icon on the right-hand side of the chat bar, users can clear the chat history. Only Producers can clear the Group chat, but both Producers and Speakers can clear their Direct chat history. One important note is that chats are deleted permanently and cannot be recovered.

That's all for today, folks! Be sure to explore these new changes on the Webex Events platform!

Event App 46.0
Studio 2.13.0

This month's release is bringing two great updates to our Production Studio. Grab your presentations and come to Production Studio! We now offer the ability to upload your PDF Presentations and present them easily with the Clicker from your mobile device. Keep reading to find out more!

PDF Presentations

We are excited to introduce another highly requested feature in Webex Events Production Studio. It will now be possible for both producers and speakers to upload their presentations in PDF format and use them onstage. 

From the new Add button, producers and speakers can access the Presentation gallery and add presentations or access previously uploaded ones. After uploaded, the presentation can be added as a card backstage. The card will be visible both to the producers and the speakers. It has arrows for the next and previous slides, as well as an option to jump to any slide.

Clicker

With Webex Events Production Studio, you no longer have to say, “next slide, please!” during your presentations. We are excited to introduce the new Clicker that enables speakers to effortlessly navigate between the slides of the presentation from their mobile devices.

• Speakers can enable or disable Clicker for the presentations they upload.
• In the Settings modal, there’s a URL for the Clicker that can be used to access it.
• Producers can change the Clicker URL by clicking on the Refresh Clicker button on the Settings page. 

Read our PDF Presentations and Clicker in Webex Events Productions Studio article for the deep dive and be sure to explore these new changes on the Webex Events platform!

Platform 7.5
Studio 2.12

At Webex Events, we love spring not only because it makes flowers blossom 🌸 but also brings many highly requested improvements to our platform. From being able to edit attendee email addresses and studio upgrades to enhancing our Add to Calendar function, continue reading to learn more about the upgrades our amazing Team released! 

Edit Attendee Email Addresses

This is a big one! Previously, once an attendee logged in to an event, it wasn’t possible to change their email. With this much desired update, planners can change attendees’ registration email even after they log into the platform. This will help attendees who initially logged in with the wrong email address, or attendees who need to make an update. Here's how:

Go to an attendee profile and click the Settings (⋯) icon next to the 'Attendee information' heading, then click Edit. From there, update the attendee's registration email as needed and click Save Changes. 

Add to Calendar improvements

We're very excited to announce this big improvement to our Add to Calendar function. In the past, a single setting controlled all three areas the Add to Calendar button appears: the Registration landing page, the confirmation email, and the confirmation message. Now, planners have full control over where the button appears, how they want it to function, and what information it includes.

We moved the Add to calendar setting for the Registration landing page from General Settings to the Appearance section. This enables planners to adjust the calendar settings when building the Registration. We added downloadable options for Outlook and Apple calendar. We also included a description field that you can customize.

Hide Events

Who doesn’t like a clean, organized view of their events? We're now enabling planners to archive their events with a single click. Previously, there wasn’t a way to remove an event from the planner’s view, and hiding it from attendees was manual. Now, on the My Events page, by clicking the three-dot (⋯) icon on an Event, you can choose to hide it. Once hidden, the event will be removed from the planner view, and attendees can no longer access it.

You can locate a hidden event by using the filters in the My Events page and unhide the same way. When an event is unhidden, attendees will be able to access it. Read our Hiding Events article for more details! 

Share Video Files

Producers speakers can now share videos directly from their computer in the Webex Events Production Studio. Click Share in the control bar, then Share video file, and choose your .mp4 or .webm video file from your folders. No need to upload in advance!

Unlike Overlay videos, which appear on top of everything else in the stream, these new shared video files appear on the backstage as a card, letting you use them in layouts like screen shares.  

In addition to playing or pausing video files, a time display backstage shows the total time of the video and the time played. You can use the progress bar to easily navigate to a specific moment in the video, or move forwards or backwards. Mute/unmute the card or adjust the volume before putting it onstage so speakers can also talk over the video.

Last but not least, we added a looping function so your video can play repeatedly on the stage. This is great for introduction, break, and closing segments of streams, and much more!

Send to Vidcast

We've added the ability to send videos and Studio recordings up to 5 GB to your Vidcast library. Vidcast is a powerful video messaging tool from Webex that makes recording, editing, and sharing videos easy. This new functionality is available if you login to the Webex Events platform using SSO with your Cisco account, which is the case if you’re a Suite Enterprise customer.

From your Event App’s Uploads or Recordings page under the Video Center, click a video’s three-dot (⋯) icon, then Send to Vidcast. Or, check multiple videos then click the top bulk action button with three dots, then Send to Vidcast. Click Yes to confirm sending and begin processing. From there, use Vidcast’s AI-powered platform to make every video even more engaging, discoverable, and memorable. Get more details on all the ways to use Vidcast and Webex Events together in our Vidcast & Webex Events article. 

Layout Controls

Back in January, we added Full-screen controls in Production Studio to enhance the broadcasting experience! Producers and speakers can enter this mode by clicking the full-screen icon located at the bottom right of the stage, or by using a keyboard shortcut.  

Now we’ve added a new item on the side menu, Layouts, so producers can change the layout when in full-screen mode. It’s true - we think of everything. Learn more about Full-screen Controls in our Getting Started with Webex Events Production Studio article.

That's all for today, folks! Be sure to explore these new changes on the Webex Events platform!

Platform - 7.4
Studio - 2.11.0

We’ve done not one, but two releases this March! In this one, we’ve improved audio in Production Studio and added security updates to our platform login. Read below to find out more!

Advanced Noise Cancellation

Production Studio continues to rock with new improvements! We’ve implemented Webex’s impressive noise cancellation tech in our Studio. Previously, the Studio utilized the noise cancellation from the user’s browser, so sounds from kids, dogs, etc. could slip through. With this release, those background noises are reduced, and you’ll have a much clearer audio experience!
 
By default, noise suppression and echo cancellation are active for every producer and speaker in the Studio. If you prefer deactivating them, navigate to Audio Settings and uncheck them.

If you want to learn more about the features of our Production Studio, check out Introduction to Webex Events Production Studio and Webex Events Production Studio FAQ.

Password and Log out Requirements

Who doesn’t like a bit more peace of mind? To make our platform more secure, organizers will be logged out automatically after 7 days of inactivity. We’ve also increased the requirements for password strength. Here are the new requirements:

• At least 8 characters.
• One upper and one lower case character.
• At least one number.
• At least one special character.

Keep in mind that this change is for the organizers’ platform, not attendees, and only affects new users and users who are changing their password. Additionally, those who are using SSO to login are excluded from the new password requirements.

That's all for today, folks! Be sure to explore these new changes on the Webex Events platform!

Platform 7.3
Event App 45.0
Studio 2.10.0

We pulled a Captain Picard and "made it so" by releasing three major customer requests: eCDN support, and customizing Branded Apps' terms and networking settings. We've also added Safari support for Production Studio and removed the third-party accessibility overlay option from the Web App and Registration. Watch the release video or keep reading to learn more!

Kollective eCDN

We're excited to announce the launch of this highly demanded feature! During internal events like all-hands or town halls, without an enterprise Content Delivery Network (eCDN), many users simultaneously streaming could overwhelm your corporate virtual private network (VPN), leading to slow performance and buffering issues. Webex Events now offers an integration with Kollective eCDN to minimize the impact of heavy traffic on your network performance in a few simple steps!

How do I get access to the eCDN option?

This feature is available exclusively to Webex Suite Enterprise (Suite EA) customers. You'll also need to be a Kollective customer and get assistance from a Webex Control Hub admin. Get more details about configuration in our Set up Kollective eCDN for Webex Events article.

How do I activate eCDN in the Webex Events platform?

When editing a Session, expand the Live stream section and activate the Enable Live Stream toggle. Then, for either Sessions or the Live Stream feature, click the Stream Provider dropdown and select Production Studio, RTMP, or Simulive.

Next, activate the Enable Enterprise Content Delivery Network (eCDN) toggle. When you're done, click Save Changes. It's that easy!

Customize Terms

From the My Apps section of the platform, click the Settings (⋯) icon on your App, then the new Customize terms option. 

Click the toggle to customize several details, including links to your terms of service and privacy policy, then click Save & Continue.

If you're customizing terms for an existing app, on the subsequent Update Notice page, check the "Notify attendees of changes in your Terms?" box if you'd like existing users to accept the updates, then click Save Changes.

Networking Settings

Attendee networking has been a core part of our offering since the very beginning. However, some clients prefer to focus on other aspects of the attendee experience. With this update, you can now turn off attendee networking and Shake & Connect for all users of your Branded app. After you've updated your App to version 45.0 or later, you can update change these settings at any time.

From the My Apps section of the platform, click the Settings (⋯) icon on your App, then the new Networking settings option.

In this module, you can toggle off Attendee Networking plus the Shake & Connect feature, or only Shake & Connect. When Attendee Networking is toggled off, attendees can't add connections via the Attendee List feature or by clicking or tapping other attendees' names or profile images via other features. They also can't privately message each other, privately video chat, or propose meetings.

Safari support for Production Studio

We're thrilled to announce that Production Studio now supports Safari for speakers and producers using a computer, in addition to Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge. 

Third-party accessibility overlay removed

We've been working hard to make sure our platform offers the most accessible and inclusive experience for both event planners and attendees. For example, in August 2024 we launched alt text and focus indicators. As a part of our dedication to accessibility, we've removed the option to add the third-party accessibility overlay for the Web App and Registration. We're confident the experience is better without this overlay.

That's all for today, folks! Be sure to explore these new changes on the Webex Events platform!