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We’ve all learned a lot about work since the start of the pandemic. We learned that work isn’t a place you go—but a thing you do. That workers are more productive when they’re free to choose their own schedules. That staying connected with colleagues is more important than ever.
But most importantly, we learned that these trends are here to stay. Businesses are going hybrid in record numbers, with most executives expecting workers to spend one to four days in the office a week.
This hybrid future is indicative of one thing: workers need new ways to collaborate. For example, teams aren’t always physically together anymore—some might have alternating schedules, while others work remotely full time. Everything from meeting rooms to phone calls need to support this new dynamic.
Whichever direction you go, we have your back. Our latest releases are built to help you and your teams work better—from anywhere. Here’s everything to know about our Q2 2021 releases:
Messaging
1. Reply directly to tasks
Messages can get buried in an instant, especially in larger messaging teams where discussions are frequent. That means your tasks—action items that you can create in the RingCentral app—may get buried too, along with the conversations tied to them.
Now, you can have conversations within a task itself. Replies to tasks are separate from the wider conversation in a group, making filtering out task-related comments much easier.
2. Set up call forwarding and voicemail settings
Users can now set up their call routing and voicemail settings right within the RingCentral desktop app. Making these settings available within the app helps your business get up and running more quickly.
3. Chat with our chatbot
Finding the right support resources can often take time. That’s why we launched our new AI chatbot in the RingCentral app. The chatbot determines what type of support you need, helps you find the right articles, and even connects you to live representatives in our support department if needed.
4. Find help in our Resource Center
The RingCentral app is packed full of great features, but sometimes you might need help finding a particular feature or reach out to support. That’s why the mobile app now comes with its own Resource Center where you can discover the latest features, get how-to tutorials, and contact support.
Video
1. Team Huddle: Hop in and out of conversations at any time
In the office, teams can physically huddle together on a whim. These ad hoc meetings are excellent for brainstorming sessions, casual conversations, and even celebrations. That’s why we’re making this possible in the RingCentral app too.
Team Huddle opens an always-on meeting room where members in the same messaging team can join and leave at any time. This allows for quick conversations without having to schedule meetings far in advance.
Learn more in our Team Huddle blog.
2. RingCentral MVP: Add Video Pro and Pro+ users
For current and prospective MVP customers, administrators can now add Video Pro or Video Pro+ licenses to their account, thereby bringing more of their employees onto the RingCentral platform.
Some key benefits:
- Scale up your business: Optimize for product-user fit in your business. Get the right solution for the right user.
- It’s simple and intuitive: Admins can easily add Video Pro and Pro+ licenses in MVP.
- Feel empowered as an MVP: Bring more users onto a single platform, reduce shadow IT risk, and eliminate application siloes.
3. Logitech Rally Bar family for RingCentral Rooms™
As meeting rooms make their comeback, they have to evolve to support both in-office and remote workers. That’s why we partnered with Logitech to launch all-in-one appliances that get your meeting rooms ready to go.
The Logitech Rally Bar and Rally Bar Mini are designed for meeting rooms of all sizes, with speakers, microphones, camera, and RingCentral Rooms packaged together. Just set up and your teams are ready to join the conversation.
Learn more in our Logitech Rally post.
4. RingCentral Rooms: Now with voice activation
While meeting rooms adapt to support hybrid work models, we also wanted to make them more convenient for hosts and participants to use.
Meeting rooms equipped with RingCentral Rooms now offer voice activation to start meetings. A half hour before the start of any meeting, employees can say “Hi RingCentral, join meeting” to launch the next meeting on the schedule. This is available for both Mac and Android Rooms.
Learn more in our touchless features post.
5. RingCentral Rooms: Meeting controls on your smartphone
On top of voice activation, RingCentral Rooms hosts can now control meetings straight from the RingCentral app on their smartphones—instead of having to use the shared tablet controller.
Using your phone as a controller means not having to disinfect a shared device before the meeting and no worries about infection from these high-touch surfaces. At the same time, you can use your phone from anywhere in the meeting room—allowing meeting hosts to choose the best position in the room for being seen and heard and also allowing for greater seating flexibility for social distancing.
Learn more in our touchless features post.
Phone
1. STIR/SHAKEN: Protect yourself from unwanted calls
Every day, our phones are so inundated with robocalls that we try to ignore numbers we don’t recognize. But that’s not possible in business settings where customers try to reach you. In accordance with FCC mandates, we’re taking an important step forward in protecting our customers.
STIR/SHAKEN is a framework that givesprovides voice service providers a way to “sign” caller IDs as legitimate on outbound calls, and identify inbound calls that are potentially spoofed.
Compliance with STIR/SHAKEN helps our customers identify robocalls as spam so they only have to connect with legitimate callers
2. A new enterprise portal for federated accounts
We’re making it easy for enterprise companies and businesses with 45,000+ users to manage their accounts and users.
The new enterprise portal provides clear, consolidated visibility and admin functionality at the highest level. From a single pane, administrators will now be able to provision, manage, and search across all of their RingCentral accounts.
3. Other administrative enhancements
On top of all-new phone features, we’ve also made enhancements to the phone experience.
- Admins now have a much simpler way to route calls to different touch points without having to navigate through complex setup processes.
- Admins can now search for users by email in the Admin Portal. This helps them manage large user bases more efficiently.
- Admins now have a new, simplified Add User flow with the ability to choose user types, add, and enable users in a single step.
Global
1. Welcoming new countries
We’re always expanding the number of countries Global MVP supports. This quarter, we welcomed four new countries:
- Greece
- Estonia
- Slovenia
- South Africa
This brings the current number of supported countries where local MVP is supported to 44.
Platform and integrations
1. RingCentral for Salesforce: Updates
RingCentral for Salesforce is one of our most popular apps—and we made it even easier to install. The app now comes with an install wizard that guides new users through a series of simple steps so they can jump right into the action.
In addition, we also added a new Salesforce integration specifically for RingCentral Video Pro and Pro+ users. This is designed for our free and paid subscribers.
Check out RingCentral for Salesforce here.
2. RingCentral for Zapier: Available now
Zapier makes it easy to automate tasks between apps, and RingCentral’s integration with Zapier makes it easy to create custom workflows triggered by video meetings, voice, SMS, and fax activities on RingCentral. Check out our new action “’create video meeting”’ and new triggers “’SMS received”’ and “’SMS sent”’ to help further automate your workflows.
Check out RingCentral for Zapier here.
More to come
As you settle into new work paradigms, we’re here to make sure you and your teams have everything you need to stay connected. That doesn’t stop with just these features. Keep an eye out for even more improvements to RingCentral in the months ahead.
Learn more about RingCentral MVP
Work together from anywhere with messaging, video conferencing, and phone calls—all in a single platform.
Learn more
here.
Originally published Jul 12, 2021, updated Dec 30, 2022
