Microsoft Teams is an incredibly popular choice for a communications platform, but what if you just want to make a simple voice call with your team? RingCentral integrates directly with Teams to give you the best of both worlds – a world-class VoIP system that works alongside Microsoft Teams.
RingCentral has long been around as a great small business VoIP phone system and powerful fax service, and recently they have started offering their video calling system as a standalone product, which is really worth looking at.
What we are talking about today is RingCentral MVP as a VoIP system for your company, and how it can be integrated into Microsoft Teams to offer you a seamless experience. You can not only make voice calls with RingCentral, but also video calls.
Do you use Google Chrome? The RingCentral extension is the easiest solution
If you are already a RingCentral MVP customer and have standardized on Google Chrome, the easiest way to integrate into Microsoft Teams is to simply use their chrome extension, which makes it extremely easy to trigger phone calls and video meetings directly from Microsoft Teams.
The best part is that the extension is not limited to Teams; in fact, it works across all of Microsoft Office 365, including Outlook. The extension can:
- Schedule meetings natively from Outlook
- Easily call or text contacts from Office 365 contact cards
- Make and receive calls directly from Office or Teams
- See all RingCentral and Office contacts together
- Click to call any phone number listed in emails
- much more…
Since Google Chrome is widely used everywhere, this option works for a lot of people. But you are not limited to using an extension, so read on for the rest of the options.
Integrate the RingCentral application directly into Microsoft Teams
If you are a Microsoft Edge or Safari user, or want RingCentral to integrate with the mobile app, you can also integrate the RingCentral app directly from the Microsoft Teams app screen. Just click to add an app and search for “RingCentral” and it will appear.
It is worth noting that since we are integrating the RingCentral application into Teams, you will also need to have the normal RingCentral desktop or mobile applications installed on your device.
Once you add the app and it appears in the bar on the left, you can pin the app for easy future access, which will definitely make it more convenient.
The first time you open the RingCentral app you will have to go through the setup process, which involves logging into your accounts and authorizing everything. You will need to have an account with sufficient permissions to do this.
If you have a larger organization or want to install it for everyone, you may want to follow the official RingCentral documentation, which will require someone with admin access to set it up in Azure and give you the proper permissions there.
Once you have everything set up – and it’s worth noting that RingCentral has an extremely helpful technical support staff in case there are any questions – you can simply use the dialing app to make phone calls directly on the interface. This will launch the RingCentral application to complete the call.
You can search through your Teams contacts of course.
And from any card or chat screen, you can use the RingCentral icon or commands to trigger a meeting or call with a contact or team.
From the contact card you can even schedule a meeting in the future if you wish.
As you can see, the features of this integration are similar to those of the Chrome extension, but they work in all browsers. However, the main advantage of using the Chrome extension is that it can be integrated into all of Office 365, which is a bit more useful.
Business customer? You can upgrade to Cloud PBX For Teams to get powerful native features
If you are running a Microsoft Teams enterprise license, you can upgrade your RingCentral package to support full Cloud PBX integration, which is significantly more powerful, and upgrade the underlying calling functionality within Teams to support the full features of RingCentral. .
This integration is a significant enhancement to the native functionality in the Teams business phone system. Larger companies that need advanced call routing, queuing, recording and analytics will have much better luck upgrading to the cloud PBX option, which is fully integrated under the hood with no plugins or extensions required. It is the best option for adding a VoIP phone system to Microsoft Teams, and it uses extension mechanisms officially supported in Microsoft Teams.
RingCentral PSTN services are available in 44 countries and 16 languages, as well as being able to set up local and toll-free numbers in more than 110 countries.
