I’m a firm believer that video meetings are the future of teamwork. After all, just look at the bonanza of companies adopting long-term hybrid work models. Google was a big one recently, and Twitter employees can work from home forever.
So where do video meetings come in? On a surface level, video meetings help office, hybrid, and remote teams work together from anywhere. That part’s simple—and something we’re all familiar with at this point.
But on a deeper level, video meetings have the herculean task of keeping us all connected. Not just on projects and assignments, but for work relationships and culture too. The human connections.
Knowing the role video meetings play in our work lives now, it’s no surprise that people have 250% more meetings every day than before the pandemic. We’re all busier than we’ve ever been, despite our relative freedom to work from anywhere.
It’s our job at RingCentral to make video meetings less stressful and more meaningful—to curb video fatigue and distractions that interrupt the flow of meetings, while keeping things fresh and exciting.
At Enterprise Connect 2022, I had the chance to show attendees our latest innovations in RingCentral Video. Here’s everything we showcased at the convention:
1. RingCentral Webinar
If you’ve attended (or even hosted) a webinar before, you know that running one is mired with difficulties. From scheduling to attendance issues, keeping webinars on track can be a painstaking process.
RingCentral Webinar simplifies the experience by keeping everything on the RingCentral platform. Users can schedule, host, and attend webinars all from their RingCentral app, just as if they were joining a video meeting.
- Supports up to 10,000 attendees
- Join on any device: PC or mobile
- No downloads required. Join straight from a browser.
- Available now in beta. Sign up here.
Learn more about RingCentral Webinar:
2. Advanced Meeting Insights
Let’s face it, meetings can get stressful. Not only are we listening, taking notes, and oftentimes presenting, we also have to miss some meetings. And when you miss meetings, you either watch the recording or rely on notes taken by a colleague.
Advanced Meeting Insights helps you stay on top of your meetings—even if you miss them. Our newest innovation uses AI to understand every part of a meeting and automatically generate a quick summary for you to easily scan and catch up in just a few minutes.
And it’s much more than just a summary. Every recorded meeting includes:
- Snippet & keywords
- Full summary
- Topics
- Video highlights
- Full transcription
The best part? Summaries are automatically created after every recording. They can then be shared with anyone in your organization.
Learn more about Advanced Meeting Insights here.
3. Whiteboard
Video meetings can be so much more than just screen sharing and close-ups of your colleagues’ faces.
Whiteboard emulates the physical drawing boards in meeting rooms by giving participants a large space to collaborate. You can draw, upload files, and discuss ideas on a blank canvas that extends beyond the edges of the screen.
What makes Whiteboard especially powerful is that everyone in the meeting can contribute to the canvas. From drawing to pasting sticky notes, there are no limits to what a team can create.
RingCentral Whiteboard will be generally available in Q2, 2022.
4. Live Transcription
Our schedules are packed to the brim with back-to-back meetings, which makes it easy to lose context once in a while. So we made meeting conversations much easier to follow.
Live Transcription uses AI to automatically transcribe spoken words into written text—like captions in a movie. Anyone in the meeting can reference the transcript at any time, or download it for post-meeting viewing.
Whether you join the meeting late and need to catch up or have non-native English speakers, Live Transcription makes catching up to the meeting simple.
5. Participant Reactions
Just as you could react to messages and texts with emojis these days, video meetings should have the same treatment. So we brought reactions to RingCentral Video.
Participant Reactions are a fun and lightweight way to express your thoughts about the discussion at hand. Choose from several reactions such as laugh, clap, and speed up/slow down.
Participant Reactions will be available in Q2, 2022.
6. Join Zoom and Webex meetings via RingCentral Rooms
Running into workers and teams who use different meeting solutions is a common occurrence these days. The challenge is finding the simplest way to join their meetings. That’s why we’re bringing that flexibility to our users.
RingCentral Rooms users can now join Zoom and Webex meetings via SIP right from your conference room. Just dial the SIP ID straight from the meeting controller and you’re in.
Join the meeting platforms your customers choose without having to download additional apps or navigate away from your RingCentral system. It’s one of the many ways we make communication simpler.
Generally available in Q2 2022.
7. RingCentral Rooms appliances
Hybrid work means meeting rooms now have the added responsibility of connecting both in-office and remote workers together. We made it easy with several key partnerships.
We partnered with world-class video conferencing hardware providers to bring RingCentral Rooms directly into their meeting room appliances. These appliances provide audio, video, and meeting room controls all in a single kit so companies can quickly and easily deploy video conferencing into their meeting rooms.
When a meeting starts, just dial into the RingCentral meeting ID and your teams are good to go. Partners include Logitech, Poly, and Yealink.
Check out the latest RingCentral Rooms features here.
More than just video
Of course, all of our amazing innovations in video meetings wouldn’t be complete without the other communication essentials that support them—messaging and phone.
A future in hybrid work means using all forms of communication. Whether it’s clicking a single button to start a group call or switching meetings from your PC to your smartphone, you’re much better off doing it all in one app.
Check out the photos from our awesome Enterprise Connect booth, and see you at next year’s show!
Originally published May 02, 2022, updated Aug 22, 2024
