Seamlessly add visual collaboration to Webex spaces to work better together

When the global pandemic struck and millions of workers shifted to remote work, companies quickly learned that creative work—brainstorming, exploring, and nurturing new ideas—is hamstrung when solely relying on video meetings and messaging for collaboration. Enterprises invested heavily in visual collaboration solutions like MURAL to enable teams to imagine, engage, and align better while remote. In fact, over 75% of Fortune 100 enterprises have adopted MURAL at scale.

With the hybrid workplace becoming the new reality for many (where employees split time between the office and remote work), the challenges of effective collaboration are not going away. The hybrid model may present even more complications than remote work. According to recent research from Cisco, over 50% of employees expect to work from home at least 8 days a month. 

Enterprises are wrestling with this challenge, asking how to consistently spark creativity and innovation when teams are working from different places on different days? 

Many companies have found that taking a digital-first approach to teamwork helps to enable effective collaboration regardless of location. This has led to an explosion of new digital applications that enterprises must enable and manage. It’s been equally overwhelming for employees whose work is spread across messaging platforms, video meetings, documents, digital whiteboards, and more. This leads to increased context switching which means less deep work, decreased productivity, increased stress and overwhelm, and frustration. 

Bridging collaboration workflows with seamless integrations 

Enterprises must help centralize their teams' collaborative workflows, while maintaining the flexibility of having multiple solutions available. The integration of collaboration software is critical to meet the demands of hybrid, remote, or whatever your future work modalities will be. 

One company that is leading the charge is Cisco. At the end of 2020, they announced the Webex App Hub, a collaboration app ecosystem where integrated solutions make it easy for users to move seamlessly between their favorite apps and for IT to simplify workloads. As a leader in the visual collaboration space, MURAL was excited to be featured as a launch partner for the new Webex ecosystem. 

Today, we’re delighted to share that vision is now a reality with the launch of the new MURAL App for Webex! 

Bring imagination to the spaces where your team collaborates

MURAL now seamlessly integrates with the Webex Suite, which includes calling, messaging, meetings, virtual event management, and more in one app. With MURAL and Webex together, your team can collaborate visually from anywhere at any time. Wherever your team is in the world, they’ll come together to create your next big innovation in Webex with the help of MURAL. 

The MURAL App for Webex allows you to easily add a shared digital canvas to any team space in Webex and start collaborating visually using sticky notes, drawings, images, diagrams, and more. When teams have a space to think and collaborate visually, they can unleash their true potential to innovate, drive decision making, and solve hard problems, whether working in hybrid, distributed, or remote environments.

‍

Run your next project with MURAL to brainstorm, plan, engage, and align with your team. To get going even faster, you can leverage pre-made templates such as flowcharts, Agile retrospectives, design sprints, OKR planning, and much more. Collaborating visually empowers everyone to share and evolve concepts, whether working asynchronously or in the same meeting. 

We will continue to enhance the integration with MURAL and Webex. Next, we’ll build an integration into Webex Meetings which will allow you to open a shared digital canvas during a live video meeting!

With the mural pinned to your team’s space in Webex, it’s easy to keep your work organized and the team focused with everything they need in one place. 

Get everyone on the same tab

When all of your collaboration and communication happen in one space, your team can focus on the task at hand without confusion or distraction. Visual collaboration with MURAL is continuous—your team can keep working on the key murals throughout a project. No more wasting time searching for the right resource; it’s all pinned in your team’s Webex spaces. 

‍

‍

Async or in sync, visualize together in one space

However and whenever your team works together, thinking and collaborating visually allows them to do creative work without the restrictions of other mediums. You can show your teammates what you really mean and easily build off of each other's ideas.

‍

Great ideas should be seen, not only heard 

With MURAL, anyone can share their ideas, input, and feedback, not just the loudest voice in the room. Collaboration becomes more inclusive and the ideas can be more thoroughly explored and improved upon by the combined talents of the entire team. 

‍

‍

The MURAL App for Webex makes visual collaboration easy

Get started by adding the MURAL App to your Webex instance from the Webex App Hub. If you’re on a MURAL Enterprise Network plan, your MURAL administrator will also need to enable the integration from the company dashboard or contact support for assistance.

Once you’ve added the app to your Webex instance, you can go into any Webex space, and click on “+Apps.” Then choose the MURAL App and select which digital canvas you want to add. All of the core mural features are available including Facilitation Superpowers. 

Check out the MURAL App for Webex support article to learn more about setting up and using the app. 

To try the MURAL App for Webex, sign up for a free trial of MURAL today.