RingCentral Gives Customers More Flexibility with New Microsoft Teams Enhancements and BYOC

RingCentral upgrades the entire Microsoft Teams telephony experience with advanced phone capabilities, SMS, Voicemail, Fax, and call-to-web

RingCentral, Inc. , a leading provider of global enterprise cloud communications, video meetings, collaboration and contact center solutions, announced it is bringing a broad and reliable set of phone capabilities to Microsoft Teams. Customers have the option to choose between a direct routing solution or the RingCentral dialer integration for Microsoft Teams, and will have access to SMS, fax, voicemail, and more.

RingCentral is also announcing that the RingCentral MVP™ (Message Video Phone™) platform is now available via a new flexible BYOC (Bring Your Own Carrier) offering, which gives enterprises the choice in supplying their own telephony access, allowing them to bring in their carrier(s) of choice and extend their global footprint. Enhancements to safety capabilities with updated location awareness will be made available to U.S. customers and with updated abilities to manage emergency response locations will be made available worldwide.

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“Our success depends on maintaining long-term relationships with our clients, and a big part of that involves regular phone communication. With RingCentral embedded into our Microsoft Teams environment, we now have an intuitive, high-quality telephony solution our staff can use anywhere to stay connected to clients and each other”

Jaya Kumar, global chief marketing officer at RingCentral, said, “RingCentral’s mission is to give customers the very best business communications capabilities in a secure, trusted, and reliable way, and we’re delighted to extend RingCentral’s capabilities to organizations using Microsoft Teams. Teams need to be able to collaborate whether it is scheduled, spontaneous or ongoing. Teams also need to connect from any device and across modalities. It is about being able to connect when, where and how you want. We call it – Your Work. Your Way.”

Enhanced Solutions for Microsoft Teams Customers

RingCentral is helping Microsoft Teams customers enhance their calling experiences by offering telephony solutions that provide advanced phone capabilities and enterprise-grade reliability and compliance. Microsoft Teams customers will now have access to:

• Business SMS, Fax, Voicemail, and Call-to-Web: Microsoft Teams customers that want to utilize the comprehensive RingCentral cloud PBX functionality will be able to integrate the RingCentral app to embed calling, SMS (Q1 ‘22–US only), Fax (Q1 ‘22), Call-to-Web (Q4 ‘21), and Voicemail (Q4 ‘21) controls within Microsoft Teams.
• Direct routing: RingCentral enhances direct routing service for Microsoft Teams by enabling customers to deploy Business SMS (US only), Fax, and Voicemail at no additional cost.
• Enhanced onboarding: An easier, streamlined onboarding experience, so admins can simplify deployments.

RingCentral also provides customers with two options on how to bring RingCentral’s calling experience into Microsoft Teams:

• an embedded dialer integration between the RingCentral app and Microsoft Teams
• a direct routing solution to power Microsoft Teams calling natively.

Deeper integrations between the RingCentral app and Microsoft Teams

Customers who leverage the RingCentral app to meet all the complex calling needs of their business can create even tighter integrations within Microsoft Teams, by embedding controls for Business SMS, Fax, and voicemail, alongside their existing embedded dialer, and choosing between the RingCentral web or desktop app as their calling endpoint. These users can now unlock more efficient integrations and workflows between the two apps. Customers can also simplify their workflows with quick access to voicemail messages within Microsoft Teams–and can check their voicemails without having to switch into the RingCentral app.

In addition, customers can choose how they want to make calls in Microsoft Teams with new call handling settings–choosing between either the RingCentral desktop or the web app to complete their calls with the embedded RingCentral dialer.

Through the integration with RingCentral for Microsoft Teams, customers can embed rich phone capabilities and power every calling use case in their organization; access a comprehensive suite of cloud PBX capabilities; enable rich IT and line of business analytics and reporting; and receive unparalleled security, compliance, and global trust benefits.

The RingCentral for Microsoft Teams add-in is available now with embedded dialing; SMS will be available in the US only; Fax and Voicemail will be available later in US and other regions.

Enhancing Direct Routing for Microsoft Teams

Customers who want a native calling experience for Microsoft Teams can choose RingCentral’s direct routing offering to be the back-end cloud PBX and expand their Teams calling global footprint. RingCentral’s enhanced direct routing solution provides closer ties to RingCentral’s cloud PBX infrastructure, and greatly benefits admins, who will be able to have a much simpler onboarding experience through a tighter, more automated administration workflow. RingCentral is also now offering a new complementary add-in for direct routing customers to provide Business SMS and Fax capabilities–features not available in Microsoft Teams.

“Our success depends on maintaining long-term relationships with our clients, and a big part of that involves regular phone communication. With RingCentral embedded into our Microsoft Teams environment, we now have an intuitive, high-quality telephony solution our staff can use anywhere to stay connected to clients and each other,” said Simon Bulleyment, CIO at Haysmacintyre, a Top-25 UK Accounting Firm. “The enhancements RingCentral is now providing to Microsoft Teams users–access to voicemail and direct routing–are ones we have wanted for a long time. These improvements will provide us with even greater calling experiences, increased compliance, more flexibility, and unparalleled security and reliability.”

RingCentral Bring-Your-Own Carrier (BYOC) provides more flexibility in the path to cloud and global expansion

RingCentral Bring-Your-Own-Carrier (BYOC) gives customers an extra level of choice as they transition to the cloud. The BYOC model enables customers to supply their own telecom services, connecting an existing or preferred telecom carrier(s) into the RingCentral cloud, enabling the RingCentral app to provide business calling in concert with team messaging, task management, unlimited cloud storage, picture annotations, video meetings, virtual backgrounds, meeting transcriptions, closed captions and more. Enterprises across the globe can migrate communications and collaboration to the cloud while retaining existing telecom carrier relationships, providing more flexibility in their cloud migration journey.

BYOC will be available in Q4 2021 with any SIP trunk capable gateway, in addition to being certified by industry leading SBC vendors such as AudioCodes and Ribbon Communications.

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Peace of mind that RingCentral meets unique user needs and global compliance requirements

RingCentral remains committed to user safety and regulatory compliance. RingCentral delivers enhanced location accuracy and provides caller identification information on E911 calls for users in the U.S. In addition, RingCentral makes it easy for administrators to define and manage corporate emergency response locations so they can be shared and re-used by end users, and also allows end users to define and manage personal emergency response locations. Visit the RingCentral Trust Center to learn more about RingCentral’s industry-leading global compliance.

Improved system flexibility to help administrators match the right level of RingCentral service to their users’ needs

RingCentral MVP™ administrators were introduced to the ability to add RingCentral Video Pro™ and RingCentral Video Pro+™ users to their MVP® accounts earlier this year. This powerful feature helps MVP administrators empower their users with the right RingCentral solution for their needs, be it a combination of Message and Video, or the full MVP suite. This quarter, we are enhancing the administrative experience with a simple and intuitive way to manage users’ licenses in the admin portal. Administrators can quickly view user license types, and initiate changes as needed. This functionality helps administrators consolidate vendors, mitigate shadow IT, and deliver better product-user fit across their organizations. This capability is presently available for US users only.

“As people continue to work from anywhere, they need solutions that make their lives easy and productive,” said Jon Arnold, Principal, J Arnold & Associates, an independent technology research and analyst firm. “The new integrations and enhancements from RingCentral make it extremely easy for customers to access RingCentral and the overall experience is seamless.”

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