RingCentral, Inc., a leading provider of global enterprise cloud communications, video meetings, collaboration, and contact center solutions, announced two new products to meet the current and evolving demands in education. Based on RingCentral’s flagship offering RingCentral Message Video Phone (MVP®), RingCentral Education Essentials™ and RingCentral Education Standard™ are designed to provide flexible solutions for the hybrid or virtual classroom, district, or campus. The RingCentral Education™ products help students, educators, and administrators connect over message, phone, and video all through a single, unified application.

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“RingCentral has opened so many doors for our university in terms of flexibility, mobility, and the chances to create new processes that best serve each team and department. And with the way it helped us through COVID, RingCentral has shown us that our university will be ready to handle anything”

“Education across the globe is evolving. New models of hybrid learning are here to stay, and educators and learners need the flexibility to communicate and adapt real time to keep learning inclusive, accessible, and always on,” said Naveed Husain, Vice President of Worldwide Industry Programs at RingCentral. “With the launch of our new education products, we are streamlining communications in a single platform — enabling teachers, students, and the community to easily collaborate with each other to meet the growing needs of today and be flexible enough for the changes of tomorrow.”

“RingCentral has opened so many doors for our university in terms of flexibility, mobility, and the chances to create new processes that best serve each team and department. And with the way it helped us through COVID, RingCentral has shown us that our university will be ready to handle anything,” said Joshua Tooley, Director of IT Support, Texas Christian University.

“Special School District of St. Louis County has been a RingCentral customer since 2018 and we currently have 1,491 licenses. RingCentral allows us the flexibility to support families all over St. Louis County without sacrificing quality or features. It’s easy for users, allows for single sign-on, and is easily managed on the administrator side,” said Mandi Zweifel, Telecommunications Manager, Special School District of St. Louis County.

RingCentral Education Essentials™

Designed for schools of any size — from small charter schools to large public universities — RingCentral Education Essentials is a simple and easy way for teachers and administrators to use phone and message solutions. The cloud-based system makes it easy to manage calls and voicemails on any device — and is complete with local numbers, extensions, call delegation, call screening, and visual voicemail. New features will enable users to:

• Support campus safety needs: Provide classroom-to-classroom dialing; and send 1:1 or group text messages from your school phone number.
• Simplify administration and keep track of all classrooms or offices: IT admin made easy. Manage users, monitor call quality, dive into usage analytics, and configure employee permissions — all in one place.
• Connect every call: Set school and work hours, custom greetings, and advanced call routing so you’ll never miss a conversation.
• Share classroom materials real time: Built-in team messaging allows schools to enable chats with faculty, parents, and the extended campus community; share files, tasks, and calendars; and create teams.
• Streamline setup: Port existing numbers to your RingCentral account or obtain new ones instantly.

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RingCentral Education Standard™

RingCentral Education Standard includes all the phone, messaging, and video capabilities needed to run an effective hybrid classroom with technology to help you engage with students*, parents, faculty, vendors, and other staff. Using RingCentral Education Standard will enable schools to:

• Support “always on” hybrid learning with unlimited video meetings: Leverage video meetings for large lectures; break out rooms for deeper conversations; or Team Huddle for quick connections and feedback. Keep learning happening during class with whiteboarding and after class by sending out recordings, transcripts, and AI-generated meeting summaries.
• Streamline classroom experience: Features help you manage your classroom and keep classes, groups, and projects organized for students with relevant notes, recordings, chats, and more. You also have a built-in video offering to effectively run office hours with the Team Huddle feature. Students can easily pop-in and pop-out into virtual office hours, making it easy to run for teachers and easy to join for students.
• Seamless integration with existing campus technology: Simple and direct integration with leading learning management systems (LMS) providers that meet the latest LTI standards like Canvas, Blackboard and D2L.
• Avoid app fatigue for your campus: Keep it simple for higher education students to connect with each other via phone or video; receive the latest information via message about registration or financial aid; or meet alumni to network for internships or jobs — all in one app.
• Create custom student experiences: Host up to 200 students, parents, or alumni in a single meeting to connect and develop a deeper understanding of your school — even prior to setting foot on campus or after graduation.

Security and reliability come first

RingCentral Education Essentials and RingCentral Education Standard offer seven layers of security to protect school data and communications. Service remains at the highest standard with a 99.999% available uptime SLA — this equates to around 5.26 minutes of downtime each year.

Information about K-12 schools’ usage of RingCentral’s video conferencing feature in accordance with their FERPA or COPPA requirements is available here.

RingCentral puts the safety of your staff and students first. As required by Kari’s Law, RingCentral allows account administrators to populate each device’s specific location (down to the building and floor or room number). In addition, as part of our Ray Baum’s Act compliance, RingCentral also enables users to update their emergency response location in real time. Whenever a user moves its RingCentral computer app, we prompt that user to update their emergency response location, so we can connect you to the closest emergency response center.

If an emergency arises, a user can call 911 without first dialing a prefix, such as 9. RingCentral passes the emergency response location provided by the user to the emergency response center, allowing responders to pinpoint the caller’s location. RingCentral also informs a designated account administrator that 911 has been called, and the caller’s location.

“With the high demand for remote learning in the last few years, video and collaboration have become essential technologies for the education market,” said Dave Michels, Principal Analyst and Founder, TalkingPointz. “This new, market-optimized offering means RingCentral is well-positioned to address the challenges of hybrid learning, campus safety, and connected campuses and communities.”

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