VQ Conference Manager 4.8: New features at-a-glance

The latest release from VQ Communications.

VQ Conference Manager 4.8 is now available, and brings a whole range of new capabilities to your self-hosted or air-gapped Cisco conferencing service. 

All created by our UK-based engineering team in response to feedback from customers, these features make your collaboration service more capable, more resilient, and easier to use for everyone involved. 

What’s new in VQ Conference Manager 4.8? 

• Advanced Conferencing Center – Supporting complex and high-stakes meetings on Cisco Meeting Server 
• Extended unified conferencing – making CMS+cloud services even easier to use 
• Enhanced high-availability – Cutting failover time to sub-60 seconds and simplifying operations
• Support for multiple CMS clusters – Cutting operational overheads, enhancing meeting experiences and boosting service resilience
• Microsoft Teams Rooms (MTR) mode – Run MTR on Cisco video devices where you can’t use Cisco Collaboration Control Hub (formerly Webex Control Hub), such as US Government and defense environments
• Cisco video device certificate management enhancements – Additional automation to simplify renewals 
• Cisco video device backup management – Automated, scalable backups of your in-room device configurations 

How to get VQ Conference Manager 4.8? 

Existing customer? Email support@vqcomms.com to arrange your upgrade. 

New customer? Email sales@vqcomms.com to begin your journey. 

Delving deeper: More about the new features in VQ Conference Manager 4.8 

Advanced Conferencing Center – Supporting complex and high-stakes meetings on Cisco Meeting Server 

Some meetings can be self-service, with zero operator input required. Others require a conventional managed meeting. But there are some where the stakes are so high that they require a heightened level of sophistication and supervision. We’re talking incident management. Emergency responses. Business interruptions. High-profile conferences. 

VQ Conference Manager’s new Advanced Conferencing Center supports these complex, mission-critical meetings, streamlining their planning, launch, and operation. 

Find out more: 

Advanced Conferencing Center overview.

Extended unified conferencing – making CMS+cloud services even easier to use 

ITo support organizations running cloud-based conferencing alongside their Cisco Meeting Server platform, we have a roadmap of features to make these hybrid services simpler for end users to access. 

The latest addition to this is our hybrid calendar add-on. This will extend One Button to Push (OBTP) support to meetings scheduled on other services, such as Webex and Microsoft Teams CVI.  

Learn more about unified conferencing.

Enhanced high-availability – Cutting failover time and reducing costs

The importance of our customers’ conferencing platforms means high-availability (HA) is a must-have for many. Our original HA has been extremely popular, but customers told us they needed even faster recovery times. 

The latest evolution of our HA slashes failover times to sub-60 seconds, while also simplifying operations and cutting costs. 

Support for multiple CMS clusters – Enhancing meeting experiences and cutting operational overheads

With lots of organizations running multiple Cisco Meeting Server clusters, VQ Conference Manager can now be used to manage multi-cluster deployments. 

This can bring a range of benefits, including: 

• Reduced operational overheads, thanks to ‘single pane of glass’ to run service 

• Improved in-meeting experiences 

• Enhanced service resilience 

Microsoft Teams Rooms (MTR) mode – Run MTR on Cisco devices without Control Hub

Cisco video devices can run Microsoft Teams Rooms, which is normally activated using Cisco Collaboration Control Hub (formerly Webex Control Hub). But for customers that can’t use Collaboration Control Hub, VQ Conference Manager now lets you enable and monitor MTR on your Cisco devices without it.

This will particularly benefit government and defense customers using Microsoft’s sovereign cloud solutions in environments where Webex Control Hub is not authorized for use.  

Cisco video device certificate management enhancements – Additional automation to simplify renewals 

Ever since its launch, VQ Conference Manager Device Management and Automation (DMA) has sought to streamline and simplify complex and time-consuming tasks, in particular certificate management. 

We’ve now gone even further, by automating more of the process. As well as identifying devices that need their certificate renewing, the software will now generate the necessary certificate signing requests (CSRs) for you, ready to be sent to your signing authority. 

Cisco video device backup management – Automated, scalable backups of your in-room device configurations 

Historically, backing up the configurations of your Cisco in-room devices required technicians to sign into each individual device, and specify where to back it up to –  which could have been on any storage they chose.

The latest version of DMA centralizes backup and restore capabilities, making them efficient, scalable, and secure. Schedule backups to run periodically. Store and manage the backups within VQ Conference Manager’s secure file server. Restore to individual or multiple devices, with the assurance you’re using the latest configuration.

And there’s much more to come later in 2026 – stay in the know 

This is the first of several exciting releases we’ve got planned for 2026. To keep up to speed on the latest innovations around self-hosted and air-gapped conferencing, follow us on LinkedIn, or sign up to our newsletter.