When it comes to tech companies that have had an outsized impact on how we live and work, it’s hard to dispute that Google has been a leader. In the 22 years since the company was founded, Google has changed how people use the Internet in countless ways—and the enterprise has been no exception.
A constellation of tools that includes Gmail (email), shared calendars, documents, and other functions, Google’s offerings for business, collectively called Google Workspace, have had a massive upward trajectory. In the 4.5 years since November 2015 (back when Google Workspace was still called Google Apps for Work), paid usership has tripled to 6 million paid accounts. There’s a good chance you and other businesses your organization does business with are among them.
But as with any tool you’re using to support collaboration and productivity, you may wonder if there are ways you can use it better in order to make communications more seamless, efficient, and streamlined. Installing RingCentral’s Google Workspace Add-on is one way to accelerate the collaborative benefits you’re already gaining from using Google Workspace. Here are five ways the RingCentral Google Workspace Add-on will make everyone on your team’s life easier.
1. Message or call colleagues directly from Gmail
Email has long been a primary communication tool within workplaces for many good reasons. Email creates a lasting record of what has been said, and can be sent from any connected device at any time. But email is not without limitation. In fact, email can be a source of unhappiness among workers.
It’s easy to see why. Emails are easily ignored—one survey found 60.8% of workers to be guilty of not responding to emails occasionally, often or always—and they’re rife with the potential for miscommunication due to lack of tone and context.
That’s why one of the best pieces of work communication advice around is to switch to a different mode of talking if you’re not making progress after a couple of back-and-forth email messages. The RingCentral Google Workspace Add-on allows you to message or call colleagues directly from Gmail, making it easy to hop on a call or video chat without added coordination for those times when email conversation isn’t cutting it.
2. Schedule meetings directly in Calendar
Hands up if you find scheduling virtual meetings to be as onerous as meetings themselves! First, you have to find an agreeable time, then create a calendar entry, and then figure out how to correctly export your meeting call-in details from your conferencing app to your invite. Get that last part wrong and you’ll also waste a ton of time when the meeting begins and everyone has trouble accessing it.
Installing the RingCentral Google Workspace Add-on eliminates this complexity altogether by allowing you to create a meeting, and fully populate your invite with details such as meeting ID and password, directly from Google Calendar with just a click.
3. See your colleagues’ current status
In an office scenario, it’s easy to swing by someone’s desk for an impromptu chat when the need arises. When everyone’s working from home, it’s harder to gauge availability. And when your collaboration needs require a deeper conversation—for example, an audio call or face-to-face video chat—you can lose powerful momentum simply trying to coordinate a time for that remote conversation to happen.
Though it may not be possible to use a closed door or other visual cues to determine the right time for on-the-fly chats in remote work scenarios, the RingCentral Google Workspace Add-on provides the next best thing: it allows you to instantly see when all of your RingCentral contacts are available, away, offline or in do not disturb mode.
4. Start an email from a RingCentral contact card
The seamlessness of RingCentral and Google Workspace flows in two directions—and connecting the two also helps you to extend the usefulness of RingCentral. For example, sometimes email makes the most sense for communicating, such when you need to follow up with materials after a meeting. RingCentral’s Google Workspace Add-on simplifies this too by allowing you to send an email directly from a user’s RingCentral contact card.
5. View call history
While the number of options for communicating online is undoubtedly a boon for collaboration, it’s a nightmare for staying organized. Communicating across email, video, phone and SMS makes it difficult to remember what conversation occurred when, which can have impact on accountability. But RingCentral’s Google Workspace Add-on automatically creates a log of all your calls, making it easy to determine when that important conversation occurred.
Work efficiently with the RingCentral App
Collaboration tools are essential in the workplace—especially as more people work from home. But they also add complexity, as employees are forced to turn to multiple apps to meet their communication needs. RingCentral helps Google Workspace users get more out of their existing tools, and do so more efficiently, by connecting key functionalities so that users don’t have to change apps to communicate.
With the RingCentral app, the Google Workspace add-on creates a single record of information, combining team messaging, video conferencing, and cloud phone into a single platform for all workplace collaboration. As with all RingCentral apps and integrations, the Google Workspace add-on is free for all users.
Learn more about cloud integrations in the post, “What Exactly Are Cloud-Based Integrations?”
Originally published Jul 30, 2020, updated Jan 18, 2023
