RingCentral Expands Its API

RingCentral, a provider of cloud business communications solutions, today unveiled the RingCentral Connect Platform, a set of tools and services to build, deploy, and manage custom integrations using RingCentral APIs. With this platform, developers can build out-of-the-box integrations with RingCentral to add powerful communication capabilities to business applications.

"This is a significant step forward because businesses want to better connect with customers, and communications is at the heart of every customer interaction," said Vlad Shmunis, CEO, founder, and chairman of RingCentral, in a statement. "In the past, integrating communications into business apps has been complex and expensive. We're breaking down the barriers that have isolated communications from business applications."

RingCentral had previously integrated with other cloud enterprise applications, including Saleforce.com, Google for Work, Zendesk, Desk.com, Box, and Dropbox. Starting today, RingCentral is opening up, making it possible for its platform to be available to an ecosystem of hundreds and thousands of developers.

A couple of new integrations are already available, includingZoho, which allows customers of their CRM to leverage RingCentral capabilities without ever leaving the Zoho app. In addition, Intuit integrated RingCentral into one of its products to enhance the customer experience. 

"The RingCentral Connect Platform has allowed us to create a tightly integrated solution for customers who want embedded communications capabilities and analytics that can improve the user experience," said Ian Wening, vice president of business development at Zoho, in a statement. "With our leading technology and experience in cloud CRM, this partnership with RingCentral provides a valuable enhancement that helps us differentiate our core offering.” 

"Great software companies today are API-first because it drives innovation," said Sam Boonin, vice president of product and platform marketing at Zendesk, in a statement. "Because of our open platforms, thousands of companies have already delivered great customer service with Zendesk and RingCentral."

The RingCentral Connect Platform enables multimodal communication, capturing communication logs, automating key business processes, streamlining user provisioning, and leveraging valuable business insights. Example use cases include the following:

• A medical business can use an integrated app to seamlessly consolidate call recordings into its patient management system.
• A sales team can integrate voice calling into their CRM to enable sales reps to make 30 minutes more calls per day.
• A home repair dispatch can integrate SMS to send text alerts to field repairmen to visit certain locations that need repair.
• A customer support team can integrate a screen pop to allow a customer’s account to automatically show up on an agent’s screen when that customer calls. 

The RingCentral Connect Platform provides a suite of tools and services, including a developer portal, a self-service APIs, SDKs, sandbox environment, and tutorials. Developers can manage the full life cycle of custom applications, including tracking applications in development, and moving apps from sandbox to production. Developer support and a forum will also be available to assist developers and answer questions.

As part of the platform launch, RingCentral will also introduce a new App Gallery, a destination where customers can discover application integrations that are commercially available, and where developers can showcase their integrations. 

---

Related Articles

Zoho and RingCentral Integrate CRM and Cloud Communications

RingCentral adds cloud communications and collaboration to Zoho's CRM solution.