How we work today feels very different to how it did just a year ago. With the proliferation of hybrid working, we face new challenges. Meeting fatigue, back-to-back meetings and timezone conflicts are just a few examples.
The need to zip in and out of offices at will, take our meetings on the go, work in geographically dispersed teams and collaborate across different time zones is still as crucial as ever. We’ve redefined where and how we work, and RingCentral is addressing all that brings.
Our mission is to enable you to work the way you want. That means delivering innovations that transform both the employee and customer experience.
Here’s a look at the latest innovations, along with a sneak peek at what’s coming, to empower global teams with simple and flexible asynchronous communication:
Innovations that help global teams combat meeting fatigue and time zone conflicts
1. Advanced Meeting Insights
With today’s packed schedules and back-to-back meetings, joining late or missing meetings is more common than ever. But that doesn’t mean you have to miss the context of those meetings.
For this reason, RingCentral has developed new AI-based Advanced Meeting Insights and Summaries for all video meeting recordings (even for free accounts).
Advanced Meeting Insights and Summaries uses AI to automatically generate a meeting summary, allowing anyone to quickly review what was covered. This feature is an Enterprise Connect 2022 Innovation finalist!
Here’s what every Advanced Meeting Insights includes:
- AI-generated keywords: Recordings come with an AI-generated list of keywords so users can easily scan the context of those meetings. People can easily find relevant recordings and get scannable notes on discussed topics before they even view the recording.
- AI-generated meeting highlights: Recordings automatically generate a highlight reel of the meeting recording. This provides users with a distillation of key moments of the discussions so they can get a quick version (a few minutes long) as a complement to the entire meeting recording.
- AI-generated meeting summary: Recordings will include a written summary of the live transcription so users can get caught up in seconds.
Advanced Meeting Insights and Summaries are available as a public beta from Q2.
2. Whiteboard
This is a way to avoid fatigue and monotony by co-ideating with your teams. The new Whiteboard feature allows you to draw, upload files and brainstorm ideas on a canvas that extends beyond borders.
It includes powerful functionality to help people find each other and jump to specific areas of the canvas instantly with a mini map functionality and “bring to me” feature.
RingCentral Whiteboard is generally available from Q2, 2022.
3. Live Transcription
Whether you’re joining a call late and need to catch up or need to multitask, Live Transcription makes it easy to stay on top of what’s happening.
Give late joiners and non-native English speakers an easy way to reference what’s being discussed.
Live Transcription uses AI to automatically transcribe conversations into written words in real time. Users can reference the transcript at any time during the meeting, or download it for post-meeting viewing
4. Participant Reactions
Reactions are a fun and lightweight way to add emotions to your messages. Now we’re bringing them to your video meetings, too.
RingCentral Video meetings now include a menu of reactions. Participants can choose from several emojis, speed up, slow down, and raise their hand when they have a question to ask.
Participant reactions are available from Q2, 2022.
Innovations that bring together asynchronous and synchronous communications in one app
5. RingCentral Webinar
RingCentral Webinar provides a stress-free option for hosting virtual events.
Creating a webinar from the RingCentral app is just as easy as scheduling a meeting. It’s built with a full ecosystem of solutions including integrations, APIs and analytics that help you set up, run, manage and track the performance of your virtual events.
From all-hands to marketing webinars, anyone can host webinars with confidence. RingCentral Webinar is now available in beta. General availability in Summer 2022.
6. RingCentral Add-ins
RingCentral Add-ins bring your third-party business apps directly into your RingCentral app interface.
Workflows are natively integrated into team messaging so you can perform actions without ever having to switch apps. For example, we’re working on a DocuSign add-in that allows you to review and sign documents directly in RingCentral.
Current RingCentral Add-ins include apps from Akazio, Bridge OC, Bugsnag, GitHub, Jira, Keeper.AI, Poll bot, RSI (Shadow Bot) and Trello.
In Q2 we’re releasing more apps from Aha!, Asana, Google Forms, Google Drive, Hubspot and Workday, with many more to come in the near future.
Learn more about RingCentral Add-ins here.
7. RingCentral for Hubspot integration
RingCentral for Hubspot embeds key RingCentral capabilities into your Hubspot CRM account, allowing you to get more work done and communicate directly from Hubspot. Make and receive calls from your HubSpot account, quickly assign call dispositions, log calls, take notes and more, all without having to jump back and forth between applications.
Our integration streamlines communication and reporting workflows, building on popular integrations such as Salesforce, Zendesk, Google and Microsoft Teams.
8. RingCentral EU Unlimited
RingCentral EU Unlimited gives organisations unlimited calling across the EU. Foster greater team, partner and customer collaboration without counting the minutes.
For businesses that require high-volume calling, our newest package offers one flat price for unlimited calling across 28 countries.
9. Join Zoom and Webex meetings through RingCentral Rooms
Meeting with partners and customers on their preferred video conferencing tool is essential. We’re adding more flexibility to RingCentral Rooms to make your life easier.
With RingCentral Rooms, you can now join Zoom and Webex meetings via SIP.
Whether you need to join a different platform due to a customer choice, or collaborate with agencies who are standardised with another provider, easily schedule those meetings to your room or dial in with SIP ID right from the meeting room controller.
Innovations that inform, empower and assist hybrid strategies
10. Next-generation business analytics suite
We’re extending the capabilities of IT to empower even more insightful decisions and act as strategic business drivers for their organisations. Here’s a look at our next generation of analytics.
Next-gen analytics for lines of business
Detailed analytics provide immediate visibility into the communications that drive a business forward.
Designed to go beyond IT quality-of-service and usage metrics, our business analytics empower business users with summary statistics, trends and performance indicators that are critical for business decisions across sales, operations, finance, HR, facilities and more.
Configurable dashboards and custom reporting
Customers can now customise and share data views, key performance indicators and reports on real-time or historical metrics from any device and without the need for specialised applications or skills.
Analytic APIs are also available should developers need to access these same insights programmatically.
Analytics for RingCentral MVP helps users answer their most critical questions by giving them control of what they see and how they see it. Users can achieve resilience amid uncertainty and can anticipate the needs of their business, making business decisions a lot easier.
Innovations that provide more peace of mind for hybrid teams’ security & privacy
11. Dynamic end-to-end encryption
Dynamic end-to-end encryption (E2EE) adds another layer of security to video meetings, giving the host the ability to turn on or off end-to-end encryption at any point in a meeting.
For example, when the conversation in a meeting reaches a point that requires an extra layer of privacy, the host can turn on E2EE and later turn off E2EE when they’re finished. This gives everyone in the meeting extra assurance that only they can access the information.
Learn more about Dynamic E2EE here.
12. Advanced fax and calling controls
Advanced fax and calling controls enable users to block specific numbers and area codes in addition to more customised options.
For example, you can block calls and faxes with no caller ID, allow or block numbers that start with a specific area code, allow or block only specific phone numbers, and more.
Learn more about our award-winning phone system here.
Use AI and video to enhance agent and customer experiences
13. Engage Digital x Google Agent Assist
RingCentral Engage Digital is excited to introduce a new beta integration with Google Agent Assist.
Built using Google’s best-in-class contact centre AI, this integration provides agents with automatic template replies (via Smart Reply and FAQ-Assist capabilities) depending on the ongoing conversation.
With this integration, agents are empowered to respond faster and with more informed answers. They’ll no longer need to dig for additional information.
14. Engage Digital: Escalate to video
RingCentral Engage Digital now allows customers to seamlessly escalate a conversation from all private digital channels to video with agents with a simple click.
This escalation to video provides a richer and more personalised environment to address customer issues. Agents are also given the option to record conversations for future reference.
15. Contact Centre Virtual Agent Hub
RingCentral Contact Centre now offers Virtual Agent Hub, which lets you easily deploy customer self-service bots of your choice with minimal coding changes.
This means you can seamlessly use your existing investments in bot technology, such as Google Dialogflow, Amazon Lex and Microsoft Luis, which results in significant operational efficiencies in terms of cost and time.
Originally published May 10, 2022
