RingCentral Desktop App Features: The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly
RingCentral is one of the leading VoIP providers on the market today, and a large part of their popularity is their desktop app. With a desktop VoIP app, you can make and receive calls from the comfort of your desk using your PC, or you could be on the go with your laptop. Although the RingCentral desktop app features several useful functions, not everything is perfect. Let’s take a closer look.
RingCentral Desktop App Features Explained
The Good
Let’s start with what we love about the RingCentral desktop app. First of all, it’s one of the most compatible apps we’ve ever used. The desktop app works on both Windows and Mac and even has a Linux version! All of these versions are compatible with one another, and likewise are compatible with RingCentral’s mobile versions.
One of the best features of the app is its group messaging feature. You can easily create group chats and turn them into conference calls with one click, or just send messages and swap files with your team members. Another perk is that you can add anybody to these groups, even people who don’t pay for RingCentral!
The app is also quite snappy. It works quickly and doesn’t lock up or crash (with few exceptions, as we’ll see). It’s also got heaps of integrations available to make your work between programs seamless. Overall, it’s a great app that you can rely on for your day-to-day business. So, what are the flaws?
The Bad
In general, RingCentral Desktop runs smoothly and tends not to have many issues. However, it does have a tendency to experience problems right after a Windows update. Now, this isn’t entirely RingCentral’s fault, but we would like to see faster response time to some of these issues.
Microsoft releases these updates to developers in advance so that they can make changes to their software and, hopefully, push an update either before Microsoft does, or immediately after. However, RingCentral’s update releases tend to lag behind a bit. This means that if you update your Windows PCs overnight, you might have some issues before RingCentral releases their update.
Whenever you read about users complaining about crashes with the RingCentral Desktop app, it’s almost always after a Windows update. So keep this in mind and try to avoid updating right away if you absolutely need RingCentral to work the next day
The Ugly
To be fair, there aren’t many ugly marks on RingCentral’s record. But we like to be critical here, so we’ll go after one of their most notorious application failures: The White Screen of Death. Like the infamous Blue Screen of Death that Windows has given us for decades, RingCentral Desktop has a white version of this.
You log in, launch the app, and all you get is a white screen. The app doesn’t respond to any actions. The problem is a corrupted cache, which needs to be cleared, however, the option is invisible without using the right key combination (CTRL+SHIFT+D).
We’d love to see RingCentral fix this recurring issue, or at least program the app to clear the cache automatically when errors appear, but besides that, we really like the app and would recommend it to businesses of all sizes.