About public spaces

Public spaces are group chats that are public for your organization's users. They are on by default, which means your organization's users can make spaces public, and your organization's users can find and join those spaces (without being explicitly added by a member or moderator).

Who controls public spaces?

  • As an organization administrator, you can turn this capability on or off for all users.

  • Any user in your organization can make a new space public.

  • All users in your organization can find all public spaces.

  • Any user in your organization can join any public space in your organization.

  • Any user in your organization can make a public space private.

  • External users may be participating in your organization's spaces. They can't create, find, or join public spaces in your organization. Those spaces are public to your organization's users.

What happens if I change the public spaces setting?

If you disable this feature:

  • Webex immediately prevents your users from creating and joining public spaces.

  • The Webex App removes the controls for creating and finding public spaces.

    The Webex App takes up to 24 hours to refresh, so there is a period when users may still see controls for public spaces, but the controls won't work. Restarting the Webex App clears those controls.

If you disable the feature when there are already public spaces:

  • Spaces that were public are no longer discoverable. Webex still displays the public label, but they behave the same way as private spaces.
  • Membership of public spaces does not automatically change.
  • The controls for adding and removing members to these spaces revert to the way they behave for private spaces in your organization.

If you re-enable the public spaces feature:

  • Spaces that were public (before you disabled the feature) become public again.
  • The App provides the controls for users to create, find and join public spaces.

Public spaces don't work while blocking internal communications

Public spaces are enabled by default, unless you are already blocking internal communications. The two features don't work together because public spaces defeat the purpose of blocking internal communications.

If you try to enable public spaces while blocking internal communications, Control Hub invites you to enable internal communications. This choice puts you at risk of breaching your organization's internal security policy.

Enable (or disable) public spaces for your organization

This procedure gives your Webex users the option to make public spaces.

1

Sign in to Control Hub and go to Services > Messaging.

2

Find Public spaces, and slide Enable public spaces to on.

3

(Optional) Slide Enable public spaces to off if you don't want to use this feature.