In the average workday, communicating and collaborating with customers, colleagues, and partners is a must. Technology has given us the means to do so from almost anywhere, from the comfort of our desks, without having to pick up the phone. Using a variety of collaboration apps has proven to be cumbersome, and many enterprises have adopted unified communications as a way to bring these various communication and collaboration tools together.
However, using the cloud offers another opportunity for organisations to further unify and modernise their communications stack. Integrations and open platforms in the cloud bring these modes together with the other applications you use every day.
APIs foster app integration, workflow automation, and collaboration
Most of the productivity apps used in the workplace can be connected withAPIs. That’s where the RingCentral Connect Platform comes in to enhance the way you communicate. Companies can use pre-built integrations or the RingCentral Developer API to link their UCaaS platforms to their other enterprise tools. This lets them collaborate even more easily, and in one place.
RingCentral provides companies with one place for communications, and it can be extended using a self-service developer platform. You can build applications with SDKs, different API endpoints, our embeddable widget, in a sandbox environment that allows you to test it all out before you go live. You can automate workflows, pull in call data to your databases, and link up to your favorite cloud storage provider, and more all in one place.
Integration presents new ways of communication
When you integrate your business apps with UCaaS, you open the door for your organisation to communicate and collaborate in new ways. Some of the ways companies use these integrations are:
- CRM and customer service integrations so agents or sales teams can provide a better call experience. For example, when a call comes in to a customer service centre, the caller’s information comes up on the agent’s screen to facilitate a smoother, faster experience.
- Sending SMS and faxes directly from business applications, like notifying sales teams automatically via SMS when they reach their sales goals.
- Bringing AI and machine capabilities into UCaaS so that cloud communications can be automatically reviewed for compliance purposes.
- Scheduling calls directly from Google Calendar.
- Archiving call recordings, SMS messages, and more to Box, Dropbox, or Google Drive.
Getting the most from your endpoints
If you want to maximise your UCaaS platform and integrate applications (your endpoints), there are three ways to do it: no code, low code, and pro code. Each of these lets you add what you need and leverage the experience you have in your organisation to customize your platform.
The no code options for integration are RingCentral’s over 180 pre-built applications. These let you integrate RingCentral communications with the top CRM, productivity, AI, and customer support applications most commonly used in the enterprise. You can get started quickly and increase employee productivity and satisfaction by eliminating the need to input communications details into these programs, or vice versa, and collaborate among locations.
The low code option for integration is the RingCentral Embeddable widget for developers. This lets them build custom CTI integrations for voice, fax, video meetings, and chatbots, and embed them directly into cloud or web apps in 15 minutes or less with a minimal amount of code. For example, developers could embed a full-featured soft phone for dialing into a web application, letting employees directly connect from the app so that they don’t have to open a new screen. Developers can focus on meeting the requirements of the business as quickly as possible, updating the UI with their own custom CSS to personalise the integration to the business.
The pro code option lets companies create new workflows for unique team or organisation needs, without having to build and manage a full communications platform from scratch. RingCentral supports over 10 unique programming languages with its APIs, which are used by over 20,000 developers.
These three options offered in the RingCentral Connect Platform allow companies to customise and extend communications into their business workflows across the call, messaging, and meeting modes, and within the critical applications used every day. This open platform creates a modern communication stack that meets the needs of today’s workers, and without requiring organizations to build platforms from the ground up.
Originally published 29 Oct, 2019, updated 20 Mar, 2020
