How many times have you wished you recorded a call? Well, now you can with Call Recording. Simply press *9 to start a recording, and press *9 to stop it. Use this feature to record calls on-the-fly.
You can also:
• Customize recording notifications
• Retrieve recordings from your call logs
• Forward recordings through email to coworkers
It works with any device you’re using, which means you can record calls from home, at the office, or even from your cell phone. This can be particularly useful in companies that run customer service, training, and/or support lines, and that want to keep accurate records for legal purposes.
Speaking of legal, it’s a good idea to brush up on your legalese before you start *9ing every call—keep in mind there are several federal and state laws that regulate the recording of telephone calls and other electronic communications. We’re not taking any responsibility for what you do with call recording, and we’re certainly not letting you use our get out of jail free card, either.
For those of you who use IP phones with your RingCentral service, such as the Linksys IP Phone SPA-942, you may have noticed a red indicator light on top of your phone that lets you know when you’ve received a message. And most of the times it works—somebody calls your company, you’re not available, so they leave you a message and the light goes on. Simple, right?
Not so fast. There have been a few reports made by customers who experience a lit message indicator without an accompanying voice message.
What’s going on? Is it:
a) A haunted phone
b) An extra-terrestrial life form attempting to contact your business
c) Your phone letting you know that you’ve received a fax message
If you answered b), we’re glad you have a great marketing team, but we haven’t expanded our phone service to reach outer space. At least, not yet.
Chances are that you have a fax message that’s waiting for you. Simply log into your account or open Call Controller™, download your fax, and the message indicator light should go out.
That is, until the next message arrives.
If you have an iPhone, have we got the treat for you—version 1.7 of the RingCentral app is out. It’s a free download that includes a host of new features like the ability to copy and paste numbers, built-in company directory, Do Not Disturb toggle on every page, and our Tuesday Tip, push notifications.
Push notifications send a message to your iPhone whenever you receive a voice or fax message on your RingCentral business phone system. They’re faster than SMS and email notifications, and let you see if you’ve received a message at a glance. To enable push notifications, simply download the RingCentral 1.7 app. Once it’s downloaded, you’ll see a notification that asks you if you’d like to receive push notifications from RingCentral. Select Yes. You can always edit your selection from Home > Settings > Notifications > RingCentral.
Hollywood has taken some liberty over the years in it’s interpretation of the real world. Usually these liberties show up most obviously in concepts such as time travel and the basic physics of the material universe. But cell phones have not been spared from Hollywood’s sometimes exaggerated portrayal. Below are some of the better examples of the entertainment industry’s take on the world of business and its communication devices.
First up, let’s look back at the the first cell phone commercial from Centel to get Hollywood’s (and advertising’s) view of the future of cell phones.
“Family Guy” further brings the point on cellphones and the environment with the subject of etiquette.
And we can always count on Scrubs. This clip reminds us that our choice of ring tone might not be great if there is an emergecny, but really good if you want to be the life of the office.
For the paranoid amongst us, “The Bourne Ultimatum” reminds us that cellphones are not universally secure means of communication.
And finally we have “The Dark Knight” with a particularly clever cell phone hack to watch the city and find the joker.
For the final word on Hollywood and cell phones, we have to remember Maxwell Smart’s Shoe Phone from the Emmy-award winning television show Get Smart. Probably not the first time a wireless phone was portrayed, but definitely the best known. The CIA has a great page on the shoe phone that touts the shoe phone is one of the most famous props in pop culture. And an Adelaide researcher has thought of a further way to use this concept in the medical field. Just goes to show that Hollywood thinks the cell phone can solve all the world’s problems. 
There are, of course, many more. Link to any good ones in the comments.
Let’s face it—during the holidays, you’re looking forward to more than just spending time with family and friends, you’re also looking forward to getting out of the office.
If you have holiday travel plans, don’t leave your customers in the cold—have your auto-receptionist take your calls so you can enjoy your winter getaway.
To set up your holiday answering rules:
1. From My Settings, select Answering Rules
2. Select ADD RULE
3. Select Date Range Schedule
4. Choose your holiday dates, then follow the setup wizard
Spread some cheer by including season’s greetings or a holiday jingle to your company greeting. That’ll work, even if you’re working straight through winter.
Happy Holidays from RingCentral!
Cell phones connected to Wifi will be the final destination for VoIP in the home.
This is the second part of our discussion of The Future of VoIP.
This holiday shopping season as I was looking for a cell phone to gift, I noticed that hardware vendors like Samsung, LG, HTC, and Nokia are making touch-screen PDA phones and some are beginning to standardize around OS’s like the Android Mobile Stack. Even Motorola has started making phones like the ROKR on its new Linux-based operating system and, of course, the Apple App Store has surpassed any analyst’s wildest expectations for usage and adoption.
While selling home-based VoIP service through an ATA (Analog Terminal Adaptor – the box that connects the traditional phone port to your computer) was the first obvious stage for VoIP, we are seeing a common trend amongst those who get unlimited or all-you-can-eat wireless plans through their cellular carrier – they stop using any land-line based phone. With the exception of making international calls, increasingly people use their cell phones at home.
Along with this trend is the rising amount of phones sharing a common open-source operating system where anyone can write an application that uses the Wifi capability in their mobile (or even an iPod Touch) and use an app from VoIP application vendor – bypassing spending time with their wireless provider.
While wireless companies attempt to stop such applications from working on their networks or the phones their networks support, numerous “jail-breaks” exist for many of the more popular PDA-style cell phones. Their increased usage, like it or not, is as inevitable as file sharing music.
In South Korea, broadband and cell phone adoption is incredibly high. If their cellular phone market is any indication, possible indicators show that while the wireless carriers struggle to make money off of selling raw minutes and data (a phenomenon not seen by US Carriers yet), they do profit by creating “value-added network services” such as games for teens, cell phone coupons and wireless payments for busy professionals. There are numerous apps any South Korean teen can now download onto their phones that allow them to connect to their home Wifi and conduct VoIP calls over their cell phone.
Which means the U.S. can’t be very far behind. Expect to see people “making cheap calls on their cell phones” at home as the U.S. carriers begin to gradually increase pricing on overall ‘Family Plan’ packages in a tight economy.
Don’t refresh that browser, it’s working just fine. If you’ve come to our site recently, you’ll notice a couple of big changes.
First, RingCentral Online is now RingCentral Mobile. We noticed an emerging trend that our customers are shifting their businesses from traditional on-site centralized work forces to virtual distributed offices. With mobility being a crucial component to office communications, we decided to give our product a new name that integrates across our product line.
We’ve also taken this opportunity to completely redesign the RingCentral homepage. Our new homepage highlights our products stronger and provides simpler, more intuitive navigation.
So if you are a continuing RingCentral Online subscriber, you are now a subscribing to RingCentral Mobile. All of the features are the same; the only thing that’s changed is the name.
RingCentral Mobile makes it easy for you to:
• Get a complete virtual phone system to unify mobile employees
• Set up your phone system to work the way you do
• Incorporate your existing phones and mobile devices
• Make your company available to your customers wherever you or your offices are located
• Manage and access calls, voice and fax messages from a mobile phone
• Direct calls and faxes anytime, anywhere so you never miss a call or fax
• Deliver a professional sound and enhance your company image
• Get one low monthly rate with simple pricing
• Avoid setup or service cancellation fees
• Sidestep costly, complex hardware installation and maintenance
Click here to learn more about RingCentral Mobile.
Maybe not the biggest grossing, but certainly the most interesting small businesses related to technology that are using Twitter and social media.
TechCrunch: @techcrunch
Michael Arrington provides a very interesting outsider’s view of the world tech entrepreneurs in the San Francisco Bay Area. His blog grew to a point where venture capitalists regularly read his blog to keep up to date on the happenings of tech start-ups. When he and his writers began to tweet, it took his small business blog into the mainstream – now at any tech start-up conference, people are reading their tweets as much as they are actually listening to the speakers.
Palo Alto Software: @timberry
With over 4,400 followers, there’s a lot of decision makers (read: potential customers) that read Tim Berry’s tweets. By following a philosophy of avoiding personal updates in favor of short, economically useful data and industry tidbits, Tim has created a virtual “lead machine” for his small business anytime someone needs his consulting services.
Scobleizer: @scobleizer
In 2004, some said that no one could possibly make $1M a year from blogging. But that’s exactly what Robert Scoble did with his blog, turning Twitter into a platform that took his blog from something static (people read it when they came to it) to a push-platform that notified any of his followers on Twitter anytime he had something useful to say about the tech industry. And as it turned out – he had a lot of useful things to say. A classic example of taking a good blog and taking its readership to the next level by using unique content and pushing it on Twitter.
SmallBizTechnology.com: @ramonray
There are a lot of websites that try and cover technology from both a user and vendor perspective. Small Biz Technology, however, defined a niche for themselves and focused on becoming good at only that “one thing” that separated them online. By only writing about technology as it applied to small business owners, they’ve leveraged their website content to create a Twitter following that is both loyal and, more importantly, full of business owners that have money to spend. Kudos to another great example of taking your expertise (even if its already on a website) and leveraging Twitter to create an “active subscriber base” that had singularity of focus.
Mashable: @mashable
Who says you can’t make a business talking about Twitter on, um, Twitter? Pete Cashmore has turned his thoughts and practical “training guides” about social media (namely Twitter) into a million dollar enterprise, acting as a consultant to Fortune 500 companies as well as large media companies on how to leverage social media outlets for advertising and PR. The new Mashable Twitter Guide Book for 2009 may be outdated after this December, but it’s a great example of how teaching others (even teaching people on Twitter how to best make use of Twitter) can make for a real business on the Internet.
BatchBlue: @batchblue
BatchBlue Software was created by a group of IT guys & girls who had experience in programming, web usability and project management. They use Twitter in a unique way that other companies have started to pick up on. Their Twitter account is a communication tool between them and their customers. Server running slow? Send out a tweet letting followers know. Customer having a problem with their software? Post to Twitter and BatchBlue will answer on Twitter. Have a complaint? They welcome Twitter posts so that they can quickly address the problem. A great side effect is that they have an archived list of bugs and solutions that can help other customers down the road.
DIYMarketers: @DIYMarketers
Marketing firms especially seem to really understand the power of Twitter. Take DIYMarketers, for instance. A group of six people who operate virtually to create quick marketing for their clients, DIYMarketers has built up their Twitter account to over 4,500 followers. They tweet tips and trends in marketing to give good advice to those who are looking for more info. They also tweet links to articles of interest they feel other might find valuable. The don’t post several times a day, but rather choose to post only when it is something that they think backs up their ideology on marketing adding even more legitimacy to their tweets.
Take a moment to check these tweeters out and see what they have to say. It is a great way for a small business to build their Twitter plan based on these seven great Twitter accounts. And you might even find a few you want to follow.
There’s a myth that VoIP can be “free” when dialing international numbers. But this is only true if the other recipient of your call is using a pure VoIP client. Often, as is mostly the case when dialing internationally for work, your employees will be calling a traditional landline which will incur termination costs. And increasingly, they may be calling an international number which is a cellular (wireless) line. In fact, in many Asian and European countries, cell phone use in every day business has become so ubiquitous this may more often be the norm and not the exception.
These 2 easy steps can ensure your SMB (Small- to Medium-sized business) pays the lowest possible amounts for doing business internationally. Note that calling both landlines and cellular numbers can vary widely in per minute charges per country and even between regions in countries. This is not a scheme on the part of the US-based carriers, but rather that each country charges different termination rates for receiving inbound calls into their network from the US. As a general rule of thumb, countries and regions within countries that have less competition often charge higher termination rates, especially for cellular numbers.
Step 1 – Enable International Number Calling in your RingCentral account:
Go to “My Settings” in the Account Summary Panel. If you don’t see this readily on your screen, look for the “Click Here to Enable International Calling” link in the upper right hand corner of the Overview Panel.
* Please note that this can not be enabled during a Trial Period. In order to enable International calling, convert your trial account into a paid account by clicking the “Upgrade” link found on the Overview page of your account online.
Step 2 – Know the Prefix Before Dialing:
Insert the country code as a prefix before dialing the number, and if the international number contains a leading “0,” omit it. For example, the Louvre Museum in Paris, France lists their contact number on their web site as “Tel.: +33 (0)1 40 20 51 77.” However,
• If you dial the number as 011 33 0140205177, it will fail.
• If you dial the number as 011 33 140205177, it will go through successfully. Omitting the leading (0) is usually necessary.
** If you need help, visit our knowledge center regarding VoIP dialing internationally.
A fascinating survey conducted by RingCentral shows an emerging trend in the way America’s small businesses are operating. Here’s the scoop.
When I first started writing for RingCentral, one of the ideas thrown around in our early brainstorming sessions was to open up the data that customers were supplying the company in order to help small- and medium-sized 
business owners make better-informed decisions about their communications and work-flow strategies. To their credit, the folks at RingCentral wanted to not only supply their customers with a communications platform, but they wanted them to also be more successful at running their day to day operations.
I’m proud to announce that they’ve recently conducted a study that shows an emerging trend in how America’s businesses in the SMB (small- to medium-sized business) sector are operating in today’s challenging economic climate. In a nutshell – business owners plan to expand their business operations next year, but will heavily leverage VoIP technology to grow their offices “virtually”. While this may sound self-serving, in my experience this is a bold move for any company to “open up their veil” like this in an effort to help entrepreneurs.
They have some nice pie charts and breakdowns in the RingCentral survey (located in the first link above), but the summary upshot is that more businesses are hiring employees that do not necessarily work from the office or even in the company’s location. And while most businesses want to give their customers the impression that all are working from one geographic location, more than half of the expected new hires in 2010 will be working from a “virtual office”.
While the cost savings in infrastructure overhead are obvious (as can be evidenced by another independent study conducted by officebroker.com), what some don’t state are the benefits of being able to hire equally skilled employees that work in less expensive areas of the country – and the willingness of employees to take less salary for the ability to avoid rush-hour or daily parking expenses. In essence, people will take less if it means that their workplace lifestyle is better.
Having worked in both San Francisco as well as Austin, I can say for certain that rent is almost triple here in “the city” as opposed to anywhere in Texas. The ability for a business to be able to grow in a metropolitan area in San Francisco or New York, while being able to attract talent in a highly educated talent pool that surrounds such “University-towns” is a significant competitive advantage. This is a generalization of sorts (San Francisco versus Austin), but an SMB can hire 1.5 virtual employees for every 1 physical employee. That’s not a comment about which place is better to live, it’s just an economic fact of the cost-of-living index respective to each city.
OK, so I know some are saying “John, people have been effectively working remotely for years by telephone.” And yes, that’s true, but what’s really the driving force behind being able to do this in a large scale is the ability to be able to quickly ramp up a remote virtual office with the entire suite of features that, formerly, only an enterprise-level IT department would be able to setup.
Example: In the 1990’s (has it been that long already?), innovative companies such as Cisco Systems offered the ability for large-businesses to deploy virtual offices for remote workers that encompassed fax, virtual DIDs (local numbers) and unified messaging on one platform. But the costs were high and the interfaces still in their “1.0″ stage. Now that’s not an insult to Cisco because since then they have invested in major new enterprise-level collaboration tools for big businesses. However, what “Business Phones as a Service“companies have done is created the ability to allow such formerly pricey features to be had so that:
- Any business could afford it and be tiered to a pricing structure that allowed even a micro-business (read: 1 person) to pay per usage as their business grew to multiple employees over time.
- SMBs could adopt such technologies on a singular platform. That meant that a new employee leveraging a virtual VoIP business service could get signed up for, and trained on, a suite of features such as: intelligent call-routing, a local DID so that their area codes appeared to their customers as coming from the same as headquarters, visual voicemail, internet faxing, auto-attendants, office-to-mobile call handling and conference calling ability – all in one afternoon.
- It was easy to use. I remember starting a VoIP company with engineers from Webline, one of the pioneers of web collaboration that came out of MIT’s annual entrepreneurial competition. It was inventive and useful, but the training it required was an order of magnitude greater than the services offered today. Now when we hire a new employee, it takes very little training to get them on the “office communications platform” because the user interface is self-explanatory. It’s akin to the iPhone versus the old punch-key PBX phones – they can both do amazing things as far as communications go, but one doesn’t come with a training manual. Know what I mean?
More exciting – and useful – stats to come. Stay tuned!
Photos by deborah jaffe & Silent700