Meetings make only sense if there is a defined meeting goal to get a specific outcome and of course if all required (!) stakeholders (can) attend the meeting. In the past it probably happened that you invited someone which might not yet have Microsoft Teams but other meeting technology, e.g. Cisco Webex. So, the invited participant was than unable to join with his/her meeting solution which might not really caused a delightful user meeting experience. To cope with this challenge, there are video interop service for Microsoft Teams which mitigate this, as I wrote in the “Microsoft Teams Video Interoperability” post.

However, that’s not all, the meeting capabilities were improved and getting improved, as it looks like. Microsoft, Cisco and Zoom announced a partnership and demoed it on Ignite 2019 to provide a better user experience for mixed meetings, e.g. Microsoft Teams and Cisco WebEx.

Conclusion, opinion and summary

In my opinion it’s a good idea to support and allow “cross-technology” online meetings just because there are many users on different technologies. It helps users stay productive by just attending online meetings with their commonly used tech/app/device instead of insisting to join a meeting in unfamiliar way.

Additional resources

• Cisco and Microsoft Have Come Together to Deliver a Better User Experience [announcement]
• Microsoft & Cisco partner to simplify meetings and calling for mutual customers [announcement]
• Microsoft Ignite 2019 Session MTG20 What’s New for Microsoft Teams Meetings
• Cisco Webex Meetings for Microsoft Teams
• [Zoom] Using the Microsoft Teams Integration
• [Zoom] Getting Started with the Microsoft Teams Integration
• Microsoft Teams Video Interoperability