RingCentral Announces RingCentral for Teams 2.0 - a Next Generation Integrated Calling Experience for Microsoft Teams

Revamped solution enhances Microsoft Teams with advanced telephony, superior mobile experience, fax, integrations, and faster performance - no Teams Phone license required

BELMONT, Calif. — May 8, 2023 — RingCentral, Inc. (NYSE: RNG), a leading provider of AI-powered global enterprise cloud communications, video meetings, collaboration, and contact centre solutions, today announced the next generation of RingCentral for Microsoft Teams 2.0. RingCentral provides the ultimate flexibility with both direct routing and a next-gen embedded app for calling, and fax. 

The solution brings RingCentral’s world-class cloud PBX capabilities into Microsoft Teams with a fully native experience, and without requiring a second application. This means that end customers can now enjoy RingCentral’s renowned 99.999% reliability, global availability, and industry-leading features and third-party integration capabilities entirely within Teams’ single pane of glass.

RingCentral for Microsoft Teams 2.0 delivers a significantly enhanced, purpose-built experience with innovative features that boost productivity, including voicemail transcription, call recording, bi-directional presence sync, unified contact search, and can be coupled with RingCentral Contact Center™, one of the world’s leading contact centre solutions. 

"Many businesses have standardised on Teams for internal collaboration, but when it comes to advanced communications, customers often seek out third-party solutions," said Mo Katibeh, President and COO of RingCentral. “When customer communications are critical, businesses look to RingCentral, given our reputation for 99.999% reliability and our robust and advanced telephony capabilities. We’re excited to deliver this next generation of RingCentral for Microsoft Teams, and empower customers with faster performance, deeper integration, a new mobile experience, and simpler admin tools.”

Why Microsoft Teams Customers are Choosing RingCentral

Telephony remains a critical component of hybrid work communications. In a recent third-party study of 17,000 people, results revealed that phone is now the #1 preferred customer communication channel, overtaking email. The majority of Microsoft Teams customers have Microsoft 365 E1 or E3 licenses, which do not include telephony and require customers to purchase a calling plan or a Teams Phone license at additional cost. With RingCentral, telephony is included with all licenses, and customers have a cost-effective and robust solution for an integrated, reliable, cloud-based phone service for Microsoft Teams that offers advanced telephony features, such as call routing, custom call queues, automatic call recording, over 330 pre-built integrations, and industry-leading analytics. In addition, RingCentral provides a smart sidecar panel for quick access to key contacts and advanced call features, like monitor, whisper, barge-in, and queue management, all available on desktop and mobile devices.

“Most Microsoft Teams users do not have access to integrated calling capabilities, which means they can't use Microsoft Teams to place calls outside the organisation or to customers,” said Irwin Lazar, President and Principal Analyst at Metrigy. “As Teams users evaluate alternative telephony approaches, more than 47% are choosing to use a UCaaS provider, such as RingCentral, to enable calling capabilities for Microsoft Teams. RingCentral options for Microsoft Teams provide flexible, and highly reliable, deployment options and the ability to integrate enterprise-grade telephony, fax, analytics, CRM integrations, and other capabilities into a Microsoft Teams deployment.”     

Thousands of organisations, especially in industries where customer engagement is critical and communication downtime means major disruption to revenue and operations, have already selected RingCentral for Microsoft Teams for its superior reliability, advanced cloud telephony capabilities, analytics, app integrations, and more. RingCentral for Microsoft Teams 2.0 offers faster load times and a streamlined user interface, resulting in an improved user experience, along with robust capabilities and flexibility. 

Key capabilities of the RingCentral for Microsoft Teams 2.0 next-gen solution include:  

• Bi-directional presence sync provides user availability wherever communication happens: Presence status is automatically detected and synced between Microsoft Teams and RingCentral, including hard phones, helping users avoid needless interruptions.  

• New unified contact searching from RingCentral and Microsoft directories: Contacts from both Microsoft and RingCentral directories are now searchable in RingCentral for Microsoft Teams 2.0. This ensures callers can always find the right contact without app switching.   

• Industry-leading, out-of-the-box analytics for every department - no Power BI license or specialised services needed: RingCentral offers world-class calling analytics for IT with in-depth, real-time quality-of-service reporting. It’s paired with powerful, customisable business analytics for sales, marketing, finance, and every line of business to deliver actionable insights.  

• Extensive set of telephony app integrations to connect CRMs and business apps: Automate critical workflows with powerful telephony integrations that can help an organisation’s sales reps, customer success teams, IT support, and other telephony users automate menial tasks.  

• Deep integration with Teams mobile app: Users can place and receive calls through the RingCentral integration in the Microsoft Teams mobile app, extending the value of the integration beyond the desktop.  

• A certified contact centre solution for Microsoft Teams: Customers can complement their integrated business telephony with an AI-powered contact centre within Microsoft Teams to have all of their business communications under a single pane of glass.  

• A fully integrated advanced telephony experience in Teams: Receptionists, executive assistants, salespeople, and inbound call agents require advanced phone features such as a smart sidecar panel for quick access to key contacts, monitor, whisper, barge-in, and queue management.  

• Over 19 quarters of secure, compliant 99.999% uptime: RingCentral’s market-leading 99.999% uptime (less than 6 mins of annual downtime) ensures business doesn’t stop. Users can always access RingCentral through mobile and desktop apps and their browser to ensure they stay connected, even when other services experience outages, preventing lost revenue and keeping business running.  

“Our partnership with RingCentral serves the dual purpose of enhancing both our internal employee experience and customer experience,” said Jason Ruddock, Senior Director, Workforce Planning at UKG, a leader in cloud computing workforce management and human capital management solutions. “RingCentral's integration with Microsoft Teams has been crucial in achieving this goal as it seamlessly integrates with our existing workflows, enabling efficient communication and collaboration across departments and with customers. By leveraging RingCentral, we ensure that our teams have access to the necessary tools to deliver exceptional service and support, regardless of their location.”

Availability

The new RingCentral for Microsoft Teams 2.0 solution will be available in open beta at the end of May and generally available this summer. Learn more about RingCentral for Microsoft Teams 2.0 on the RingCentral website.

About RingCentral

RingCentral is a leading global provider of cloud-based business communications and collaboration solutions that seamlessly combine phone, messaging, video meetings, and contact centre. RingCentral empowers customers with AI-powered conversation intelligence that unlocks insights from their interaction data to accelerate business outcomes. With decades of expertise in reliable and secure cloud communications, RingCentral has earned the trust of millions of customers and thousands of partners worldwide. Visit ringcentral.com to learn more. 

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