Here's yet another piece of archaic and senseless product design hanging around in Webex, just waiting to undermine your efforts as a webinar host.

When you schedule a WebEx Event, you can configure follow up emails that will go out to event attendees and to registered no-shows. You can customize the subject line, the body, and what time the emails should be sent. So far, so good… Those are all desirable options and something I expect from any serious webinar product.

But once your event is over, you can no longer edit any of those settings. Let's say you created the bulk of your email body, but you were going to wait until your recording was ready and was hosted online so you could insert the proper access link. There is no way to get back into the settings and change the text. There is no way to update the Send time to send your emails earlier, once you have things ready for use.

The only way to manually control things after the event is over is to run an Attendance Report in your WebEx account for the event and send the follow up emails explicitly. Here are the steps to follow…

1) Log in to your WebEx account

2) Click "My WebEx" at the top of the screen

3) Click "My Reports" in the left-hand column

4) Click "Attendance Report" in the middle of the page

5) Choose a date range and click "Display Report"

6) Find your desired completed event under "Event Name" (This report shows with a red caution message for up to 24-48 hours after your event, warning that it is only a preliminary report. I assume this means you should not trust its accuracy until then?)

7) Look to the right of your desired Event Name. There are hyperlinked numbers under "Attended" and "Absent." Click the number under "Attended"

8) Click the hyperlinked phrase "Thank-You" in the middle of the text on the resulting page. There is no explanation, but this opens up the email text editor.

9) Click "Edit" and make any desired changes to your thank you message

10) Click "Save" to save your edits

11) Click "OK" to use your saved email

12) Click "Send" to send the email to all event attendees

13) Click "Go Back" to return to the report listing page

14) Look to the right of your desired Event Name. Click the hyperlinked number under  "Absent"

15) Click the hyperlinked phrase "Follow-Up" in the middle of the text on the resulting page. There is no explanation, but this opens up the email text editor.

16) Click "Edit" and make any desired changes to your absentee message

17) Click "Save" to save your edits

18) Click "OK" to use your saved email

19) Click "Send" to send the email to all event no-shows

According to the tech support representative I spoke to, this does NOT override any previously scheduled follow up emails you configured in the event itself. Those will still go out at the scheduled times. So unless you have a very good idea of exactly what you want to say and when you want it to be delivered, you should probably not schedule follow up emails in the event configuration. Using the manual edit and send process is clunky and slow, but ultimately gives you the control you would expect.

Let's review the product design…

• Create the maximum number of clicks and intermediate steps possible.
• Make the user search for action links in different parts of the screen at each stage of the process.
• Include embedded hyperlinks in the middle of data and text displays that have no explanation of what happens when you click them.
• Force long, repetitive sequences of operations to do similar actions.
• Make some screens navigate back with a "Go Back" button, others with "OK or Cancel" and others with a navigation link at the top of the screen.
• Don't provide any way to override or update previously scheduled system activities.

Back when I managed technical product design for commercial software, I would have fired an engineer who came up with this interface. WebEx has kept it around for more than a decade.

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