No one could have predicted last year how dependent we’d all become on video meetings in 2020, so it’s not surprising that many of us struggled a bit to adapt to this new style of everyday collaboration. But as we became more comfortable with online meetings, the challenge now has become to make sure that, despite the distractions of working remotely, our meetings remain effective and don’t lose momentum.
As many of us have learned, to do that we need to find ways to connect our meetings with the other important collaboration tools we use every day. By doing that, the substance of all our conversations (whether in a meeting or in a team messaging group) can live in one powerful workspace. Without that workspace, our meetings live in silos that result in lost momentum.
Connecting meetings with messaging groups
For example, when meeting participants can’t adequately prepare prior to a meeting, the output of that meeting often decreases. By integrating team messaging and video meetings in one platform, however, RingCentral allows you to create a team to collaborate, and share ideas and information prior to meetings so everyone can adequately prepare before meetings begin.
Similarly, when participants don’t maintain strong communication after a meeting, projects often stall because information gets fragmented into various conversations across disconnected emails, text messages, and phone calls.
To deal with that challenge, RingCentral has released Team Connect, which allows RingCentral app users to automatically create a new messaging group as they schedule a RingCentral meeting or connect a meeting to an already existing messaging group.
Team Connect is one of many capabilities we’ve added to help you meet smarter by tightly integrating team messaging as part of your overall collaboration workflow.
Building a team messaging group around an important meeting is an excellent way of maintaining momentum for a project after the meeting. Much more than an email thread, team messaging provides a simple, powerful way to continue to share ideas and documents.
With Team Connect, users now have an option when scheduling a meeting to automatically create a new messaging group with the members of that meeting. When scheduling a meeting from the RingCentral app, you’ll now see an option to “Create team and invite members.”
Users also have the option to create a new team along with an existing meeting. Simply find the meeting in your RingCentral app calendar, then click on the three vertical dots next to the “Join” button. You’ll then see an option to “Connect team.” From there, you’ll see an option to create a new team—with the team name and team members already populated—automatically creating a group to maintain project momentum. This can save significant time when, after a meeting ends, you realize a team is required to keep the project going.
Schedule meetings from a group
The RingCentral apps already allows you to launch a video meeting directly from within a messaging group, but with Team Connect, you can also schedule meetings directly from a group, rather than having to switch to your calendar. By clicking on the video icon in your messaging group, you’ll see an option to schedule a meeting, which is already pre-populated with your group members.
Team Connect also lets you link your meetings with an existing team. By creating that link, you can immediately send a message to all meeting participants straight from your RingCentral calendar.
To link to a meeting to an existing team, find the meeting on your RingCentral app calendar and click on the three vertical dots next to the Join button. You’ll then see an option to “Connect team.” From there, you’ll see an option to link with an existing team. Once connected, you can instantly message the entire group from that meeting on your calendar.
Originally published Oct 10, 2020, updated Dec 30, 2022
