When Bob Dylan wrote, “Behind every beautiful thing, there’s been some kind of pain,” he could have referred to the recent AI benefits in virtual meetings.

AI has relieved a lot of the aggravations that remote and hybrid workers experience with virtual meetings. It’s so bad that “meeting fatigue” is now part of our cultural lexicon.

With the shift to hybrid and remote settings came the rise of emotional fatigue and burnout associated with virtual meetings, lockdowns and managing a family space for work.

Not much has changed. Remote and hybrid workers are still expected to manage different meeting apps and browser-based UIs. They face inconsistent interfaces, technical incompatibilities and the sheer numbing from too many meetings.

To paraphrase Mr. Dylan, there’s always a bit of pain behind the gains.

When Pragmatism and Idealism Meet

AI gets a lot of buzz. But the lofty promises – and anxieties – have left many IT managers with a lot of investment but little return.

At RingCentral, the goal is to simplify the meeting experience for users – not make it more complicated with complex technology.

“We’re investing in AI a lot; not just for the desktop but mobile as well,” Ben Wu, Senior Product Marketing Manager at RingCentral, said. “We want AI to not only simplify workflows but all make the meeting experience far easier for users and create meeting equity.”

RingCentral has released more than 100 new features for its Video platform this year alone, with artificial intelligence at the heart of most of these.

This includes technology around advanced meeting summaries, which pull out the most important information from a meeting to let users catch up quickly.

Elsewhere, AI-powered noise reduction removes distractions and provides crisp audio quality for meeting participants.

There is also much more in the pipeline.

RingCentral said it’s guided by where its customers want to go – whether that’s from a call to a video meeting, or a meeting to a round-up of the most important points.

From an AI perspective, RingCentral has been busy integrating DeepAffects, which it acquired at the end of 2020. It’s aim is to make AI genuinely useful.

“Our belief is to use AI in really pragmatic ways,” A RingCentral spokesperson told UC Today. “What if you don’t have time to listen to a 20 minute transcript of a meeting, for example? Our AI can help by providing searchable meeting insights.”

Looking forward, Wu said RingCentral’s customers can expect to see it continue innovating at the same relentless pace. A focus, they said, will be on bringing its already tight-knit portfolio closer together, with AI constantly running underneath.

Here’s a round-up of some of RingCentral’s latest innovations

Keep The Noise Down

Once the exclusive provenance of high-end recording studios, noise cancellation capabilities have become a powerful AI tool in virtual meetings. Gone are the lawnmowers and sirens wailing in the background.

Transcribe It Live

AI-driven live transcription capabilities provide attendees with an easy way to catch up on discussion topics. That’s especially useful for attendees who arrive late or are geographically dispersed.

Getting At the Root of Pain with Advanced Meeting Insights

Attendees wrestle with the onerous process of catching up on what was already discussed. With RingCentral’s Advanced Meeting Insights, also powered by AI, attendees can view a snippet of the meeting in minutes.

“It’s like an ESPN highlight reel or Cliff Note for meetings,” the spokesperson said . “AI generates keywords. It summarizes topics. This is more than aggregating sentences. It combines and understands what’s going on in context.”

Long Live the Whiteboard

Users complain of being lost in infinite whiteboards. RingCentral’s whiteboard Mini-Map can be launched on demand. Interactive whiteboarding allows attendees to jot and interact with the whiteboard during the meeting.

RingCentral & Rapid Innovation with AI

RingCentral has one single source of truth. Listen to customers. Understand their pain points. Create products that address them. The company has a robust suite of AI-powered tools that work across browsers, mobile platforms and applications. Consider the innovation behind the company’s flagship product, RingCentral MVP. It runs on chat, phone and video. Any room can now be a professional meeting room.

Click here for more information about RingCentral’s advanced virtual meeting technologies and the seamless simplicity of RingCentral Webinar platform.

 

 



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