RingCentral Announces Rooms Enhancements for Hybrid Models

Company reimagines meeting rooms for post-Covid work styles

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RingCentral Announces Rooms Enhancements for Hybrid Models
WFOLatest News

Published: June 22, 2021

Carly Read

RingCentral today announced new enhancements to RingCentral Rooms that will enable people to connect, communicate, and collaborate seamlessly, whether they are returning to the office or working from anywhere. 

The new features include voice activated control enabling users to start and join meetings through a touchless experience and the ability to control the meeting from a mobile device. In addition, RingCentral Rooms will now be compatible with Logitech Rally devices and Windows devices and appliances, making RingCentral Rooms accessible to a wider audience.

Nat Natarajan, executive vice president of products and engineering at RingCentral, said: “At RingCentral we are focused on connecting people – wherever they are located – with the best messaging, video, and cloud phone service.

“As offices open up, organisations are quickly adapting to support a collaborative hybrid workforce that creates participation equity. Our rapid innovation on RingCentral Rooms makes it easier and more rewarding for people to connect, resulting in a more inclusive culture so they can do their best work.” 

 As workers begin to return to offices and work from anywhere, organisations must manage safety concerns, including cleanliness and social distancing guidelines to ensure their employees are comfortable attending hybrid video meetings in an office environment. To support this, we are announcing the following features for RingCentral Rooms:

  •  Voice activated Rooms: Users can use a voice command in any conference room that leverages RingCentral Rooms, without needing to touch the shared tablet controller or any high touch surfaces
  • Mobile phone as controller: Users can start, join, and manage video meetings in a conference room using their own RingCentral mobile app (connecting to the room via Bluetooth) so they can adhere to social distancing guidelines and avoid touching the communal controller tablet to control the Rooms system. The RingCentral app will natively support a command to start an upcoming meeting
  • Rooms monitoring: Users can now track and monitor their RingCentral Rooms devices in real-time, gaining visibility into device history and unprovisioned devices. With this feature, users can easily search, filter, and track meeting rooms and devices based on location/IP address, time, and device name
  • Rooms status and alerts: IT admins can now customise the operational status of their room’s assets to ensure meeting rooms are fully functional. Administrators can receive real-time, proactive alerts about the status of devices and integrations in any particular meeting room and remedy any issues before the meeting occurs
  • Windows for RingCentral Rooms: RingCentral Rooms now supports Windows-based host appliances, in addition to Android and Mac appliances. With this update, we are continuing to expand our portfolio by providing compatibility and support for the majority of devices used by customers today including devices from Logitech and AVer

RingCentral Rooms for Logitech

Logitech and RingCentral have partnered to provide an easy way for businesses to modernise their workplaces for the new hybrid workforce with an enhanced meeting rooms experience. With RingCentral Rooms for Logitech, mutual customers can deploy, start, and join meetings without the need for extensive meeting room equipment, delivering an all-in-one video conferencing solution for almost any workspace. This solution enables organisations to accelerate their hybrid transitions and allow onsite and remote employees to connect and collaborate with minimal friction.

The Logitech Rally Family of devices will support RingCentral Rooms, included with the Logitech® Tap controller to allow users to control room settings. Devices include:

  •  Logitech® Rally Bar Mini for small-sized meeting rooms
  • Logitech® Rally Bar for medium-sized meeting rooms
  • Logitech® Rally Plus & RoomMate for large-sized meeting rooms (available by end of 2021)

Scott Wharton, GM of Video Collaboration for Logitech, said: “Teleconference phones in conference rooms are rapidly transforming into video rooms as the world starts returning to the office and transitioning to hybrid work.

“RingCentral has been a leader and innovator in driving Unified Communications to businesses of all sizes, so their RingCentral Rooms, powered by Logitech’s market-leading video products, is a next logical step to helping people adapt to the new hybrid reality.”

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