Troubleshooting WebEx Meetings Failing to Start

Overview

Sugar's Connector for WebEx™ allows users to create meetings in Sugar® using "WebEx" as the meeting type. The related WebEx session can then be initiated or joined directly from within Sugar's Meetings module. While attempting to start the WebEx meeting in Sugar, you may encounter an unexpected behavior where the connector does not launch the WebEx session as expected. This article covers the possible cause of the problem and how to resolve the issue in your WebEx account settings.

For more information on creating meetings in Sugar, please refer to the Meetings documentation.

Prerequisites

You must have access to the WebEx administrator account to make the necessary changes in the settings.

Symptoms

In Sugar, clicking the Start WebEx option from the meeting record may result an error, "Error The site does not allow attendees to join teleconference before host". In addition, the following WARN level message will appear in the SugarCRM log file (if log level is set to "Debug") when attempting to start the WebEx meeting in Sugar:

[WARN] ERR_EXTERNAL_API_SAVE_FAIL: WebEx - The site does not allow attendees to join teleconference before host

Resolution

This error occurs in the uncommon situation where the WebEx user does not have the "Allow attendees to join the audio conference" option enabled in their WebEx settings. When the setting is disabled in WebEx, a conflict exists for this setting between WebEx and Sugar, which produces the error and prevents the WebEx meeting from starting. 

In order to resolve this issue, the WebEx administrator can use the following steps to enable the "Allow attendees to join the audio conference" option in WebEx.

1. Log into the WebEx account as an administrator.
2. Click "Configuration" on the left tree menu and select "Common Site Settings" then "Options".
3. Scroll down the page and locate the checkbox option labeled "Allow attendees to join the audio conference".
4. Mark the checkbox then click the Update button to save the change. 
    

Summary

Once the appropriate change has been made to your WebEx account, users will be able to initiate and join WebEx meetings from their Sugar account.