RingCentral Expands the Capabilities of Its Video Solution

RingCentral has announced a range of new video and team messaging capabilities to enhance online meetings and enable people to effectively communicate and collaborate from anywhere.

In addition, as people continue to work from anywhere, the RingCentral mobile app is gaining significant momentum. It is the highest-rated app in its category on Google Play with a rating of 4.6 and among the top ranking apps in its category on the Apple Store with a rating of 4.6.

A select few new RingCentral Video capabilities include:

• Overlay: Enables users to keep audiences engaged during their virtual presentations by overlaying their video on top of the content on their screen, creating a “weather person” visual effect. Presenters can interact directly with the content by moving themselves around on the screen in order to guide the message and stay visually present throughout their journey. This helps the presenter hold the audience’s attention and allows the audience to keep an eye on the presenter while following the material being presented.
• Video virtual backgrounds: Along with static images, users can now upload video files as virtual backgrounds to have more fun during meetings and express themselves creatively while maintaining their privacy. Backgrounds such as a cozy fireplace or waves on the beach can be used to create an enjoyable virtual experience, and help users maintain a professional presence by hiding their physical backgrounds.
• Breakout Rooms: Meeting moderators can quickly split up participants into smaller groups for a side discussion or brainstorm during a video meeting. This feature can create an experience that is similar to an in-person group exercise for more interactive and intimate conversations. This capability will be available by the end of Q2 2021.
• Picture-in-picture: Allows meeting participants to multi-task within the RingCentral app during a meeting. Users can quickly reference conversations in team messaging through a separate window on their screen while participating in the live video meeting.

A few new capabilities for team messaging are listed below:

• Personal folders: Enables users to group together relevant teams and conversations by creating folders for added ease and efficiency and improved organization.
• Export message data: The message data export tool helps admins narrow down their search parameters, saving time and reducing the amount of data being exported. This type of feature enables companies to export historical messages for compliance needs.
• External guest controls: Admins can elect which users have the ability to invite external guests into the organization’s RingCentral system. Additionally, admins can choose whether external guests have the ability to start conversations with internal users.
• Mobile app resource center: Instead of searching around for help and relevant resources, users can now access all of that in one place, directly from within their mobile app so they can resolve issues quickly, even while on the go.

“How we work is changing and the capabilities we need to have to communicate and collaborate will evolve,” said Nat Natarajan, executive vice president of products and engineering at RingCentral.

“We are rapidly delivering new capabilities of RingCentral Video that not only make video meetings more enjoyable and more effective but combine video with team messaging so people can get more done work more effectively before, during, and after their meetings.”

To provide greater integration between different modes of communication, including message, video and phone, and to manage concerns for when people get back into their offices and ensure they are safe, RingCentral are announcing:

• Mobile phone as RingCentral Rooms controller: Users can start, join, and manage video meetings in any conference room using their own RingCentral mobile app (connecting to the room via Bluetooth) so they can avoid touching the shared controller tablet.

As some workers begin to return to the office, while others remain at home, RingCentral Rooms allows all participants to join the meeting while adhering to the physical distancing requirements and without using the communal iPad or device to control the Rooms system.

Roopam Jain, Industry Director for Unified Communications and Collaboration at analyst firm Frost & Sullivan, said, “The rapid pace of new video capabilities demonstrates RingCentral’s strong commitment to innovation and addressing the needs of today’s evolving hybrid workforce.”

“The wide variety of new features that RingCentral has added to RingCentral Video will help drive even greater engagement for people working from anywhere – enabling them to connect and build relationships while driving business outcomes.”

RingCentral customer Elliot Hamby of Envera Systems, a leading provider of technology-based security solutions, said, “With RingCentral Video our customers and employees are able to join video meetings from a laptop or mobile phone with the click of a button and screen sharing is just as easy, which has helped us increase our productivity.”

“We’ve been pleased to see the rapid pace of new innovations like virtual video backgrounds and closed captioning. We couldn’t be happier with our choice to embrace RingCentral as our unified communications platform.”

Cody Broderick, founder & CEO, inWhatLanguage, a RingCentral customer that provides innovative translation solutions, said, “RingCentral enables us to work smarter and faster by integrating video meetings and team messaging all in a single application. We have the RingCentral application on our laptops, mobile phones and tablets so we can communicate from anywhere on any device.”

“We’ve been impressed with the speed of innovation and availability of new RingCentral Video features, like overlay presenter mode and breakout rooms, which have enabled us to share experiences both externally and internally as we continue to work together from anywhere to shape a better future.”

Author: Robyn Coppell