RingCentral for Teams 2.0 Makes its Bow

RingCentral Inc., a provider of AI-powered global enterprise cloud communications, video meetings, collaboration and contact center solutions, has unveiled the next generation of RingCentral for Microsoft Teams 2.0.

The solution brings RingCentral’s cloud PBX capabilities into Microsoft Teams with a native experience, and without requiring a second application. This means that end customers can enjoy RingCentral’s 99.999 percent reliability, global availability, features and third-party integration capabilities entirely within Teams’ single pane of glass.

RingCentral for Microsoft Teams 2.0 delivers an enhanced, purpose-built experience with innovative features that boost productivity, including voicemail transcription, call recording, bi-directional presence sync, unified contact search and can be coupled with RingCentral Contact Center.

“Many businesses have standardized on Teams for internal collaboration, but when it comes to advanced communications, customers often seek out third-party solutions,” said Mo Katibeh, president and COO of RingCentral. “When customer communications are critical, businesses look to RingCentral, given our reputation for 99.999 percent reliability and our robust and advanced telephony capabilities. We’re excited to deliver this next generation of RingCentral for Microsoft Teams, and empower customers with faster performance, deeper integration, a new mobile experience, and simpler admin tools.”

Telephony remains a critical component of hybrid work communications. In a recent third-party study of 17,000 people, results revealed that the phone is now the number one preferred customer communication channel, overtaking email.

The majority of Microsoft Teams customers have Microsoft 365 E1 or E3 licenses, which do not include telephony and require customers to purchase a calling plan or a Teams Phone license at additional cost.

With RingCentral, telephony is included with all licenses, and customers have a cost-effective and robust solution for an integrated, reliable, cloud-based phone service for Microsoft Teams that offers advanced telephony features, such as call routing, custom call queues, automatic call recording, over 330 pre-built integrations, and industry-leading analytics.

In addition, RingCentral provides a smart sidecar panel for quick access to key contacts and advanced call features, like monitor, whisper, barge-in, and queue management, all available on desktop and mobile devices.

Thousands of organizations, especially in industries where customer engagement is critical and communication downtime means major disruption to revenue and operations, have elected RingCentral for Microsoft Teams for its reliability, advanced cloud telephony capabilities, analytics, app integrations and more.

RingCentral for Microsoft Teams 2.0 offers faster load times and a streamlined user interface, resulting in an improved user experience, along with robust capabilities and flexibility.

Key capabilities of the RingCentral for Microsoft Teams 2.0 next-gen solution include:

  • Bi-directional presence sync provides user availability wherever communication happens – Presence status is detected and synced between Microsoft Teams and RingCentral, including hard phones, helping users avoid needless interruptions.
  • New unified contact searching from RingCentral and Microsoft directories – Contacts from Microsoft and RingCentral directories are searchable in RingCentral for Microsoft Teams 2.0. This ensures callers can find the right contact without app switching.
  • Out-of-the-box analytics for every department – no Power BI license or specialized services needed – RingCentral offers calling analytics for IT with in-depth, real-time quality-of-service reporting. It’s paired with business analytics for sales, marketing, finance and every line of business to deliver actionable insights.
  • An extensive set of telephony app integrations to connect CRMs and business apps – Automate critical workflows with telephony integrations that can help an organization’s sales reps, customer success teams, IT support, and other telephony users automate menial tasks.
  • Deep integration with Teams mobile app – Users can place and receive calls through the RingCentral integration in the Microsoft Teams mobile app, extending the value of the integration beyond the desktop.
  • A certified contact center solution for Microsoft Teams – Customers can complement their integrated business telephony with an AI-powered contact center within Microsoft Teams to have all their business communications under a single pane of glass.
  • A fully integrated advanced telephony experience in Teams – Receptionists, executive assistants, salespeople and inbound call agents require advanced phone features such as a smart sidecar panel for quick access to key contacts, monitor, whisper, barge-in and queue management.
  • Over 19 quarters of secure, compliant 99.999 percent uptime – RingCentral’s 99.999 percent uptime (less than six mins of annual downtime) ensures business doesn’t stop. Users can always access RingCentral through mobile and desktop apps and their browser to ensure they stay connected, even when other services experience outages, preventing lost revenue and keeping business running.

The RingCentral for Microsoft Teams 2.0 solution will be available in open beta at the end of May and generally available this summer.

Learn more about RingCentral for Microsoft Teams 2.0 on the RingCentral website.