Video meetings with Cisco Webex

Aperio can do two things with Webex, and they are independent of each other.

Joining works straight away, for any meeting, from any tool. An invitation written by Outlook, by eM Client or by Webex itself carries a join link, and Aperio finds it — in the event’s location or anywhere in its text, in any language. You do not need a Webex account in Aperio for this, and you do not need to set anything up. Every event with a meeting gets a Join entry: in the event editor, in the context menu (Shift+F10 or the Menu key on any event), and in the rotor on the phone.

Creating is what needs an account. Once you have connected one, an event gains a Create a meeting button: Aperio mints a Webex meeting for that event, writes its link into the event where every other calendar app can read it, and remembers the meeting so it can also take it back down.

Connecting a Webex account

Go to Settings → Accounts → Add account and pick Cisco Webex.

What you see next depends on the build you are running:

• If it asks only for a name, this build carries Aperio’s own Webex registration. Enter a name and press Add — your browser opens the Webex sign-in page, you grant access, and the tab closes itself.
• If it also asks for a client ID and a client secret, this build carries none, and you register your own integration once. That takes about five minutes and is free; the next section walks through it.

Nothing else to decide here. Whether a meeting is a fresh one or your permanent room, and whether Webex should mail the attendees, are both answered per meeting — and Aperio answers the second one for you. See Who tells the attendees below.

Registering your own integration

Only needed when the connect form asks for a client ID and secret.

1. Open developer.webex.com/my-apps and sign in with your Webex account.

2. Create a New App → Integration.

3. Give it a name and description — these are for you; nobody else sees them. An icon is required; any square PNG will do.

4. Redirect URI: enter exactly

   http://127.0.0.1:8080/oauth/webex

   This has to match to the character. It is a loopback address — the page never leaves your machine; Aperio listens on it for the moment the sign-in comes back.

5. Scopes: tick meeting:schedules_read, meeting:schedules_write and meeting:preferences_read. Webex adds spark:kms by itself; that is normal and nothing to worry about.

6. Save. Webex shows a client ID and a client secret. Copy both into Aperio’s connect form.

The secret goes into your system keychain, never into Aperio’s account database — which matters because that database is what synchronises to your other devices.

A note about “mobile SDK”. If Webex asks whether the integration uses a mobile SDK, answer no. Aperio talks to the Meetings REST API, not to Webex’s own app SDK.

Creating a meeting for an event

Open an event, save it if it is new, and choose one of two:

• Create a meeting mints a fresh Webex meeting with its own link and password, just for this event.
• Link the Personal Meeting Room points the event at your permanent room instead. That needs no scheduling licence and has no daily cap, but it is always the same room behind the same link, so back-to-back events can walk into each other there.

The choice is per event, not per account: which of the two a meeting should be is a property of that meeting, and it is asked at the moment you know the answer. Either way, Aperio:

• creates the meeting on Webex with the event’s title and time,
• hands Webex the event’s attendees, so the meeting knows who it is for,
• writes the join link into the event’s location (if it was empty) and appends the full join block to the description,
• and records that this meeting belongs to this event.

The block carries everything Webex will tell us, one labelled line each:

Join the meeting: https://example.webex.com/…
Meeting number (access code): 2731 234 5678
Meeting password: Tmv36kRq3vJ
Password for phones and video systems: 98476838
Join by phone: +49-619-6781-9736 (Germany Toll)
Join by phone: +1-408-418-9388 (US Toll)
Global call-in numbers: https://example.webex.com/globalcallin.php?…
Join from a video system or application: 27312345678@example.webex.com

The two passwords are not a mistake. Webex issues an alphanumeric one for the app and a numeric one for keypads — a phone cannot type Tmv36kRq3vJ at all. Cisco’s own invitations print both, and so does this.

One line per fact, and plain text rather than formatted markup. Both are for the person joining by phone or reading with a screen reader: a wrapped value would be left behind when the meeting is removed, and markup a receiving client does not render is read out as literal angle brackets.

Invitation language. A third control sits under the two buttons, preset to the language Aperio is in. It decides the language of the labels above — and it is per meeting, because a German user inviting English colleagues wants an English invitation. It has to be chosen before the meeting is made: the block is written into the event and travels to everyone, and no calendar app can translate it afterwards. The words come from the Webex adapter itself, not from Aperio, so a language Aperio has never heard of is a plugin update rather than a new app version. Anything the adapter has not translated falls back to English.

Anyone you invite sees the link in a perfectly ordinary event, whatever calendar app they use.

Remove the meeting appears once an event has one. It deletes the meeting at Webex and takes the link back out of the event.

You will see the remove button only for meetings Aperio created. An event carrying a colleague’s Webex link gets a Join button and nothing else — that meeting is not yours to delete.

Meetings that have no calendar entry

A meeting you create straight in Webex’s own web interface exists only there. It has no calendar entry, so no calendar app has ever shown it — the first reminder you get is the meeting starting.

Once a Webex account is connected, Aperio adds a read-only calendar named after that account, holding exactly those meetings. It behaves like any other calendar: toggle it in the sidebar, see the meetings in the day and week views, join them from the context menu.

A meeting that already has a calendar entry — because Aperio created it, or because an invitation brought it in — is not listed twice. Aperio matches the two by their join link, which is exact, and groups them: the day shows one row marked “2×”, and opening the group names both copies and takes you to either one.

That is worth a word, because it is the case where the old behaviour was quietly wrong. If the appointment is moved and the meeting is not, the join link still matches — so simply hiding the meeting would hide it at the very moment the two have stopped agreeing. A group does not: it stops folding and shows both rows, marked ”≠”.

If you take the two apart, they stay apart — on every device, not just this one.

The calendar cannot be edited. It shows what exists at Webex; to create a meeting, add an event to one of your own calendars and use Create a meeting on it. Your permanent Personal Meeting Room does not appear either: it is always on, which is precisely not an appointment.

Things worth knowing

A meeting the invitation brought in. When Webex mails you an invitation and your calendar turns it into an event, that event has a meeting but Aperio did not create it. The editor offers Take over the meeting: it looks the meeting up by its join link, and from then on it can be removed like one Aperio made. Nothing is written to the event — the link is already there.

Who tells the attendees. Webex can email everyone an invitation itself, and its mails carry a calendar attachment. That is a duplicate when your own calendar already invites people server-side — Exchange, Google and a CalDAV server with scheduling all do — because each attendee then gets two invitations and two entries. But on a calendar that cannot invite anyone at all (a local calendar, a subscribed feed, plain CalDAV), Webex’s mail is the only invitation there will ever be, and suppressing it means nobody is told.

So it is not a setting. When Aperio creates a meeting it looks at the event’s own calendar and asks Webex to mail the attendees exactly when that calendar cannot. An event with no attendees mails nobody either way.

Removing a meeting follows the same principle with one simplification: it asks only whether the calendar can cancel, not who is on the event. A calendar that could invite also cancels, and Webex stays quiet; a calendar that could not gets Webex’s cancellation, because otherwise the attendees are never told the meeting is off and simply turn up.

The attendee question is dropped on the way out on purpose. A meeting you took over from Webex’s own interface has invitees the event never knew about, and by the time you press remove the event may already be gone. Webex mails only the people it has, so asking it to tell them costs nothing when there is nobody to tell.

Who is really invited. The attendees on such an event are whatever the invitation mail addressed, which is often just you and Webex’s own sending address (messenger@webex.com). Aperio additionally shows Webex’s own invitee list under “Invited at the provider”, so you can see who is actually coming. If Webex declines to answer — reading the invitee list of a meeting you only attend is not always permitted — the section is simply absent.

One meeting per event, including recurring ones. A recurring series shares one meeting, exactly as a recurring meeting does in Webex itself.

Removing works from the device that created it. The record of which meeting belongs to which event stays on the machine that made it — it is not synchronised, because it is bookkeeping about a Webex object rather than part of your event. On another device you can still delete the event; the meeting then stays on Webex, where you can remove it in Webex’s own interface.

Moving an event does not move the meeting. Webex’s API has no update in the set Aperio uses. If a time changes materially, remove the meeting and create it again.

Removing a linked personal room. Remove the meeting takes the link back out of the event. The room itself stays — it belongs to your account, not to any one event, and Webex has no way to delete it.

A licence is needed for scheduling. Creating a meeting per event requires a Webex account that may schedule meetings. If yours may not, use Link the Personal Meeting Room in the event editor instead — the room needs no scheduling licence. It is a button next to Create a meeting, not a setting: nothing to switch on beforehand, and the choice stays per event.

If something goes wrong

“No plugin serves this adapter kind.” The Webex plugin is not loaded or was switched off in Settings → Plugins.

Sign-in never comes back. Check the redirect URI on your integration character by character, including the port and /oauth/webex. If port 8080 is in use by something else on your machine, Aperio says so before opening the browser.

“Sign in to Webex again” out of nowhere. Your build’s Webex registration changed — this happens when you move between an official build and one of your own. Connect the account again.

Aperio’s log (Settings → Troubleshooting) records the failing request path and status without ever recording your tokens.