RingCentral App (Glip) - Interface Overview
The RingCentral App's interface is divided into 3 panes: the left pane, the conversation stream, and the right pane.
Left pane
Conversation stream
Right Pane (Shelf)
Left Pane
The primary function of the left pane is to allow you to switch from one conversation to another, but it also provides access to other important parts of the RingCentral App, such as the Dashboard, Preferences, and Administration. See RingCentral App (Glip) - Configure User Preferences for more information on how you can customize the left pane view.
TIP: Want easy access to the Calendar? Just drag that section to the top.
The RingCentral App has sections that you can reorder in the left pane as you see fit.
Phone
Bookmarks
Favorites
People
Teams
Groups
Bottom left rail
Phone
The Phone section in the left pane lets you use your RingCentral extension to make and receive calls, listen to your voicemails and view your call history directly from the RingCentral App.
NOTE: Visit Preferences to enable Phone Calls and Desktop Notifications for missed calls and voicemails. See RingCentral App (Glip) - Configure User Preferences for more information.
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Bookmarks
Save important message to this page for future reference. You can mark specific messages as important by clicking Bookmark in actions. Find all of your bookmarked posts in the Bookmarks section in the left plane. Click on the message to jump to where it was originally posted.
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Favorites
View your favorite Groups, People or Teams in one section. Click on any of the items under Favorites to jump to the Group, People or Team.
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People
The People section of the left pane is where your active one-on-one (i.e., you and one other person) conversations are listed. Any time a new message is posted to a one-on-one conversation, that conversation immediately pops to the top of the list in the People section and the number of unread messages is displayed to the right. Once you click on the conversation, that unread message indicator will get cleared.
The People section displays up to 10 one-on-one conversations (configurable under Preferences), although all conversations with unread messages are always included. Need to chat with someone who isn't already listed in the People section? Just click on the People link itself to see the complete list, or you can use search. You can add people via the People page (including both co-workers and guests) as well, or just click the + button to the right.
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Teams
The Teams section of the left pane is where your active team conversations are listed. Teams can be used for projects you're working on, functional areas in your company, or even the company softball team.
Click on the Teams link to see the complete list of teams. In addition to all of the teams you're already in, any public teams (i.e., that anyone can join) are listed here. You can create a new team via the Teams page as well, or just click the + button to the right.
See RingCentral App (Glip) - Teams and Groups overview for more information.
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Groups
Groups are ad-hoc conversations between three or more people. Sometimes you need to chat with more than just one other person, but it's not a conversation that needs to be formalized with a name (i.e., like a team) and the membership will never change (i.e., you won't need to add or remove people). That's when you would use a group.
Click on the Groups link to start a group conversation, or just click the + button to the right.
See RingCentral App (Glip) - Teams and Groups overview for more information.
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Bottom left rail
The Bottom left rail allows you to access the following:
• Dashboard
• Tasks - See RingCentral App (Glip) - Tasks app overview for more information.
• Calendar - See RingCentral App (Glip) - Calendar App Overview for more information.
• Files - See RingCentral App (Glip) - Search for Files for more information.
• More actions
Dashboard
Click the Dashboard button to view events for this week and to help you prepare for the next week and beyond.
The Dashboard is a summary of what you've got going on. There's a snapshot of your calendar for the current week and your task list (i.e., all tasks assigned to you across all conversations, and tasks you've assigned to yourself here on the Dashboard), and a list of where you've recently been @mentioned.
TIP: While most tasks are posted in the context of a conversation, you can assign yourself tasks on the Dashboard and they will not be seen by anyone else.
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More actions
More actions lets you view additional menus, such as Links, Notes, and Integrations.
• Links - See RingCentral App (Glip) - Search Shared Links for more information.
• Notes - See RingCentral App (Glip) - Notes App Overview and RingCentral App (Glip) - Notes App | Create, Edit and View Notes for more information.
• Integrations - See RingCentral App (Glip) - Add Advanced Integrations for more information.
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Conversation Stream
The goal with the RingCentral App is to keep you in the conversation stream, and out of your email inbox, as much as possible. Group-based communication is simply more efficient in a real-time free-flowing conversation stream. The RingCentral App's conversations should feel familiar. The key elements are similar to chat services you have used in the past. What sets the App apart, and what makes the conversations more collaborative and productive, is the ability to actually get work done right in the stream.
Schedule a new calendar event, assign tasks, compose a rich-text note, create a new snippet, and share files (from your computer, Google Drive, Dropbox or Box)....all right from within your conversation stream.
No need to open up a separate project management tool to assign tasks, you can do it right from within the RingCentral App.
Not only is it more convenient, but the tasks are created in the context of the conversations that inspired them.
The Conversation Stream features the following:
Replies
Interactive Viewer
Note Viewer
Details View
Replies
Unlike other communication tools, such as email or newsfeed-based services, most communication on the RingCentral App is not based on message threads. The free-flowing conversation streams create more efficient communication that allows everyone to get things done more quickly. There are occasions, however, where there is value in being able to make an explicit connection to something previously posted on the RingCentral App. Especially when that item is no longer part of the active conversation.
In these situations, you can post a message as a direct reply to an item on the RingCentral App (i.e., event, task, file, note or link). Replies work differently for images and notes than they do for non-image files and all other content types.
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Interactive Viewer
Click on an image in the stream or from the right pane or Files app and it will be displayed in the RingCentral App's Interactive Viewer. In addition to displaying the image in large format, the Interactive Viewer allows you to post replies to the image that serve as annotations.
Just click anywhere on the image to add an annotation, which could be just a quick message, a file, or even a task. Think about how this might be useful if you were reviewing and providing feedback on some creative work. Instead of just letting someone know that you'd like to see a different color used in the image, you can attach that comment to the specific spot where the color needs to be changed, assign a task to make sure the work gets done, and even upload a file with an example of the desired color.
As with all messages posted to the RingCentral App, the replies appear right in the conversation stream, with a reference to the image itself.
Click on that link and it will open the image in the Interactive Viewer with the pin corresponding to this reply already selected. See RingCentral App (Glip) - View images | Interactive viewer for more information.
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Note Viewer
Click on a note in the stream or from the right pane or Notes app and it will be displayed in the RingCentral App's Note Viewer. In addition to displaying the note full-screen, the Note Viewer allows you to post replies to specific areas in the note.
Click anywhere on the note to add a reply, be it a quick comment, task or file, and as with the Interactive Viewer, the reply will appear right in the conversation stream, with a reference to the note.
Click on that link and it will open the note in the Note Viewer with the pin corresponding to this reply already selected.
See Also
RingCentral App (Glip) - Notes App Overview
RingCentral App (Glip) - Notes App | Create, Edit and View Notes
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Details View
For items that aren't an image or note, you can post replies from the Details view. Just select the "View Details" option from the gear menu in the stream or, for tasks and events, just click on the task/event title. You can also click on any item in either the right pane of a conversation or one of the apps.
Whether you're in a conversation or one of the apps, the Details view for the given item slides in over the right pane. For example, say you're looking at one of your active projects in the Tasks app. If you click on one of the tasks, the Details view slides in from the right and you'll be able to see all of the task's details (e.g., description, attachments, etc.) as well as its activity history (e.g.,date posted, date completed, etc.) and any replies. From here you can take some common actions on the given item (e.g., edit, delete, favorite, etc.), ask a follow-up question, or post a status update (“Almost done, I swear!”).
Click x at the top-right to dismiss the Details view, or just hit the Esc key.
Replies get posted to the stream just like any other message, but are clearly labeled as replies and reference the original item.
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Right Pane (Shelf)
The Shelf is a snapshot of the recently posted and important items in the current conversation. The first section depicts all of the people that are participating in the conversation. The colored dots represent the person's online status, with green being Online, yellow being Inactive, and black being Offline. Click on someone's picture to start a one-on-one conversation or view their profile.
The Events section shows all events that have been scheduled in this conversation for the next seven days.
The Tasks section shows all pending tasks. Click on an event or a task and its Details view will slide it over the right pane.
NOTE: For tasks, clicking on the checkbox to its left will mark the task complete.
The Pinned, Links, Notes and Files sections all show the ten most recently posted items of each of those content types. Click on any item to view its Details. Click on the arrow icon to the right of a link to open the link in a new browser window. Click on the down-arrow icon to the right of a file to download the file (or open it in Google Drive, Dropbox, Box or Evernote).
Click on the gear icon next to a section's heading (except for Events) to change the sorting of the section, or to jump to the corresponding app, pre-filtered to the given conversation. For example, jump straight into the Tasks app to start managing tasks for one of your project teams.
If you need more space for your conversation streams or just want a simpler view, you can collapse the right pane by clicking on the arrow at the top-right corner.
