IT leaders are challenged with a balancing act between different priorities, driving productivity through digital transformation, keeping the company securely up and running, and finding the right tools to drive employee productivity. In the current macroeconomic environment, the pressure is mounting on budgets. Even more so on ROI. 

At RingCentral, we adapt to the changing business needs of our customers. And as we welcome a reimagined workplace, we acknowledge that our customers need tools that work better together, make hybrid work simpler, save costs and grow the bottom line. 

That’s why we’re excited to announce our latest series of features in Q4 2022 that enable more intelligent and connected experiences with uncompromising trust for increasingly mobile and hybrid workforces. 

1. Comprehensive end-to-end-encryption for messaging, phone and video

We’re proud to say that RingCentral is the first major UCaaS provider to announce comprehensive end-to-end-encryption (E2EE) for messaging, phone, and video. 

With RingCentral’s E2EE for video (available now), phone calls (coming soon), and messaging (coming soon), organisations can leverage RingCentral’s native capabilities to simplify their technology stack with one offering. E2EE is a powerful security and privacy control that prevents any unauthorised third party–including RingCentral–from accessing communication content. Only an organisation’s IT administrators have access to the encryption keys. RingCentral simply distributes the encrypted keys to the endpoint devices.

Built using Message Layer Security (MLS) protocol, RingCentral E2EE is scalable and supports large groups and works for all RingCentral users, whether they communicate internally with colleagues or externally with guests (that are signed into a RingCentral account).

E2EE is available whether the conversation is ongoing, scheduled or spontaneous and lets participants easily and securely switch devices mid-conversation.

Contact your account manager to sign up for the closed beta. RingCentral E2EE for phone and messaging will be generally available globally in the first half of 2023. 

2. Data privacy and protection, on Europe’s terms

We’re committed to extending data privacy for our customers, and we’ve made changes to our infrastructure to ensure that content generated in Europe will be stored in Europe.

Visit our trust centre for more information on privacy. 

3. RingCentral Cloud Connector 

If you are looking for a tiered approach to deploying cloud, consider a hybrid PBX model with RingCentral Cloud Connector. You can now interconnect your on-premises PBX with RingCentral MVP through our Cloud Connector. Avoid rip and replace and migrate on your schedule.

Learn more about RingCentral Cloud Connector here. 

4. Easily catch up on your conversations with Live Transcription & Closed Captions support in additional languages

Live Transcription and Closed Captioning will support Spanish and German, with more languages to come in 1H 2023. 

Participants in meetings with Spanish or German can use Live Transcription to quickly read a transcript and catch up with the meeting, and those with auditory impairments can stay up to speed with the conversation. 

In addition, Live Transcription will soon allow anyone by default to turn on the feature during the meeting.

Spanish and German language support for Live Transcription and Closed Captioning is planned for a global open beta by end of year.

5. New user experience on phone

To provide a friction-free and seamless calling experience, we’re enhancing the app to make it more responsive and user friendly for phone call management. 

The new softphone interface will be available in open beta globally by the end of this year.  

6. Zero Touch Provisioning for Mitel and Poly phones: Deploy faster with fewer mistakes

Deploying and configuring devices is a tedious and expensive task for admins, but it could be much simpler. 

As we continue to expand supported phones for RingCentral Zero Touch Provisioning, RingCentral welcomes more Mitel and Poly desk phones to its list. This gives customers a wider selection of desk phones that they can add to their company to automatically activate users without manual intervention. 

Zero Touch Provisioning supported on selected Mitel, Poly and Yealink desk phones for fast and easy provisioning. Learn more on supported models here. 

7. More Conversational AI in meeting recordings help deliver more context, language support and speaker insights

Meeting Insights, which lets users catch up on missed meetings through AI-generated summaries, recording highlights and meeting transcripts, now includes further enhancements, designed to provide more options to recap your meetings. 

In-meeting Whiteboards now saved in recordings

Whiteboards that were created during a RingCentral video meeting can be accessed via recordings and shared/downloaded for others to view. 

View recordings segmented by participants

Recordings now come with data segmented by participant. In addition to insights breaking down speaking time by participant, the recording is spliced in a way that allows for users to playback a recording and focus on a particular participant.

Additional language support in post-meeting transcript

Supported languages for Live Transcription and Closed Captions will also be available in the post-meeting transcript.

8. RingCentral Webinars: New enhancements that make joining webinars and engaging participants seamless

Users of RingCentral Webinar can now better engage attendees and give participants more ways to join. This includes:

• Run polls to better engage and get feedback from webinar attendees.

• Start private debrief sessions for hosts and panelists to recap immediately post-meeting.
• Allow panelists to join from RingCentral Rooms, while webinar hosts can join from their mobile devices.

Want to try RingCentral Webinar? Sign up for our free beta here.

RingCentral Webinar is available in the US, CA, UK, EU, AU, India, Singapore, and Switzerland. All mentioned features are currently available in customer beta.

9. Enhancing fax workflows with more automation

Add more automation into your eFax workflows with these latest innovations:Print-to-fax

Send a fax just as you would print a document. You can now send any documents such as email attachments, PDF, or even Google Drive files directly as faxes with an easy-to-install RingCentral Fax plugin. 

No more app switching. Just select RingCentral Fax as your printer to send a fax. It’s that simple. 

Print your incoming faxes automatically

If you need hardcopies for compliance, simply toggle on this feature to enable automatic printing of all incoming faxes to optimise your paperwork and bookkeeping processes.

Scan-to-fax

Automatically attach a scanned document to the RingCentral app from your scanner or a Multi-Function device and send it as an eFax for a quick, seamless, and intuitive faxing experience.

More touchpoints in the RingCentral app to send a fax

In addition to existing Message, Video, Phone icons next to a contact, you will also see a new Fax icon so you can send a fax easily no matter where you are in the app in just one click. 

New eFax capabilities mentioned above will be generally available globally and are expected to be rolled out throughout Q4. Learn more about our online faxing solution here.

10. RingCentral App Gallery: Share and provide feedback and insights for other users to see

Star ratings and written reviews on RingCentral’s App Gallery gives fellow users valuable community-driven insights and tips before they download. 

Users of each integration can validate its effectiveness, share tips on best practices, and provide feedback on areas of improvement. This enables other users to get a deeper understanding of how using an integration will benefit them directly.

Check out the RingCentral App Gallery or click on the apps icon on the bottom left bar in the RingCentral app.

And those are just the RingCentral MVP highlights

At RingCentral, we continue to raise the bar of customer trust, deliver new features to help you do more with less, and ensure the different elements of your communications not only work together, but also within your systems and workflows.

And our Contact Centre portfolio has several key innovations as well. Keep an eye out for our next announcement on the blog. 

Not a user yet? Get the RingCentral app on mobile or desktop for free and compare the different plans here to find the right one for your business.

Originally published Dec 13, 2022, updated Jan 20, 2023