TekVizion empowers service, platform, and application providers in the telecom landscape to unlock new opportunities and overcome challenges in an evolving industry. Our comprehensive resources, automated testing tools, and expertise ensure service providers can thrive in a dynamic market.
In this multi-part blog series, we’re discussing some of the ways we help service providers worldwide to deliver exceptional unified communications and telecommunications experiences to end users, with innovative technology, automation, and specialist support.
In this blog, we’re looking at how we help service providers overcome the complexities of Webex testing, specifically Early Field Trial (EFT) testing, as the UC landscape continues to evolve.
The WebEx Testing Landscape: WebEx EFT Testing
The unified communications landscape is constantly evolving, thanks to changing customer preferences, and technological advances in networking, AI, and communication channels. Demands for new functionality, enhanced usability, and security are relentless. As a result, vendors have transitioned to a more rapid release cycle.
Cisco’s monthly release of Webex GA clients presents both opportunities and challenges for service providers delivering hosted UC services via BroadWorks (BW). Each new client version brings with it the promise of improved features and performance enhancements, helping service providers to retain a competitive edge, and delight end users.
However, new versions also introduce new interoperability issues with BroadWorks.
While Cisco does conduct testing on their clients from an application functionality perspective, the diverse nature of service providers’ configurations presents a unique challenge. Each service provider’s network configuration is distinct, making it impractical for Cisco to test every possible configuration variation.
Given that service providers lack control over the release of Webex GA clients to their customers, it becomes imperative for them to preemptively test the Early Field Trials (EFTs) to ensure a smooth transition across the General Availability (GA) releases for end-users.
Challenges with Webex EFT Testing
To adhere to customer expectations, maintain compliance, and deliver an ever-evolving portfolio of communication tools to end-users, service providers must be able to rapidly test and validate new solutions. Unfortunately, Webex EFT testing is complex.
- Over the past 12 months, Cisco has rolled out 150 Early Field Trials (EFTs) for 19 General Availability (GA) releases just for Windows. When factoring in releases for MACs, Android, and iOS mobile devices, this number increases multiple folds.
- Performing thorough manual testing for every client version is resource-intensive and time-consuming.
- This poses a significant challenge for service providers, especially when they need to ensure comprehensive testing of integrations within a shorter time frame between the final EFT and subsequent GA release of Webex.
So, how can Telecom Service Providers perform a thorough end-to-end testing of Early Field Trials (EFTs) in a timely manner, leaving no aspect unchecked?
Streamlining Webex Testing with TekVizion Automation
TekVizion Automation Platform (TAP) provides an effective solution to the Webex testing challenges today’s service providers face. It emulates human interactions with the clients and executes all calling and configuration actions typical of Webex clients.
By harnessing the capabilities of TAP, service providers can conduct proactive end-to-end testing on EFT clients against their UC configurations. This comprehensive testing covers vital aspects such as call routing, call recording, presence synchronization, and other critical interoperability elements.
By preemptively addressing any interoperability challenges, service providers can significantly enhance the overall reliability and usability of their UC services.
TekVizion Automation empowers service providers with a robust toolset to tackle the hurdles presented by Cisco’s monthly Webex client releases.
