Product Roundup: The all-new Matrix Federation, video conferencing apps and more!

The momentum for the new quarter is established early in the first month, and it’s true about Q3 at Rocket.Chat. We have had a great start to the second half of this year with the launch of salient features in our 5.0 version that facilitate secure communication and seamless collaboration to help you move the needle on your business goals. At Rocket.Chat, we are always committed to empowering organizations to own their data by bringing data privacy and security into every conversation. 

These releases will enable every organization to collaborate securely beyond company borders, thereby unifying communications to improve business efficiency. In addition, the increasing integration options with leading video conferencing providers will amp up your collaboration game in today's digital workspace.

Matrix Federation

External collaboration made easy and secure! 

The collaboration industry is one of the most fragmented industries in B2B because 91% of businesses use at least two platforms within their organization for internal communication. 

Every day, we use many communication and collaboration tools to get work done, which causes fragmented communication. We need these tools to be strongly intertwined and speak fluently to work efficiently. So when it comes to collaboration tools, interoperability of systems becomes ever so important. 

Rocket.Chat leverages Matrix protocol, an open standard for interoperable, decentralized, and real-time communication to facilitate unified communication in your organization for increased productivity and efficiency. Matrix Federation enables organizations to collaborate securely and seamlessly, regardless of the platform they use within the Matrix network. It breaks down the silos of using a plethora of communication tools and empowers you to have reliable and secure communication beyond company borders. 

Gone are the days when you resorted to email or synchronous communication to collaborate with external parties. Open federalization now paves the way for asynchronous communication and allows you to connect with people outside your organization as quickly as you can with people inside your organization. Such an external federation is a must-have requirement for your workplace communications stack to evolve, especially if you are in a highly-regulated industry that handles sensitive customer and business information.

New apps in the marketplace

Video conferencing apps

Until a few years back, most organizations would have balked at the idea of employees working from home regularly owing to loss of productivity and the lack of technology. Today, the question of efficient remote collaboration is topical like never before. So, picking the right video conferencing platform for remote work is vital. 

Integrate with a video conferencing provider of your choice

We're introducing more flexibility and control over your video conferencing capabilities in Rocket.Chat with the launch of new video conferencing apps in our marketplace this month, namely Jitsi, BigBlueButton, Pexip, and Google Meet. Such a provider-agnostic approach will give you more control over determining which platform you want to integrate with and what fits the bill for your organizational needs.
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These apps are available to all Rocket.Chat users across all the editions. However, a few advanced features such as the ringer functionality and logging records in the channel will be available only for Enterprise Edition users. To all the existing users of Jitsi and BigBlueButton in Rocket.Chat, worry not, for we will help you with the migration. For further information on the edition-specific features, read our video conferencing feature document.

We have made a few UI improvements to the existing Jitsi and BigBlueButton Community Edition users:

One-to-one video calls (in Direct Messages)

• You can check the user status and avatar before initiating a call.
• You can start the call with your camera and microphone muted.
• The ringer functionality provides a visual and audio indicator when calls are initiated.

Video conference calls (in rooms with multiple people)

• The call details are added to the room, enabling you to check members who have joined the call before starting the meeting. 
• You can name the conference and start the call with your camera and microphone muted.
• You can see the number of ongoing calls in the room with the help of the counter on the video conference icon in the header. 
• Once the call ends, details such as start time, conference name & attendees are added to the channel.
• The video conference contextual bar keeps all conferences on a channel organized.

Pexip

Rocket.Chat is partnering with Pexip, a leading video communication platform, to provide a secure, data sovereign platform for organizations that require the highest levels of security, such as government agencies. Pexip is a secure & highly private video conferencing solution for military and government organizations. This partnership exemplifies both organizations' long-term commitment to provide and innovate in the secure communications space continuously. 

The integration of Rocket.Chat and Pexip enables secure and compliant government-to-citizen communication and internal and cross-agencies collaboration, making it ideal for government organizations looking for a Skype for Business replacement. 

"There's an immediate need in the market for an on-premise digital collaboration solution that enables fully compliant and secure chat and video communications. Rocket.Chat and Pexip have come together with a complete solution and a strong commitment for the long-term success of our customers," Gabriel Engel, CEO and co-founder of Rocket.Chat.

Rocket.Chat and Pexip users can consolidate their chat messages, video communication, and projects into a single location while maintaining the security of sensitive and mission-critical communications. 

Google Meet

Integrate your Google Meet with Rocket.Chat to initiate calls directly from Rocket.Chat, and refrain from switching tools to start a Google Meet call. This integration makes it easy for users to set up audio and video calls over Google Meet quickly. Once a call is initiated in a channel, other channel members will see a notification in the channel with a provision to join the ongoing call. The Enterprise Edition users have added advantages such as ringer functionality, call details, and the option to organize calls within a channel.

Voice as channel

With this new release, we've taken extra steps to provide our users the ability to meet their customers wherever they are and provide excellent service at every touchpoint.

Thanks to all the feedback we have received, our MVP from Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) has evolved, and now it is officially part of our Omnichannel offering. 

VoIP refers to the standards that facilitate voice-based phone calls using an internet connection instead of a local telephone company. With the rise of broadband, VoIP has become the definitive choice of phone service for consumers and businesses alike.

Users from the community can:

• Receive inbound calls
• Check the call history
• Leverage the SIP extension management capabilities

For enterprise customers, the opportunities are even more exciting and include:

• Placing calls on hold
• Adding call notes

And last but not least: starting outbound calls to take your call center to the next level!

Starting a call from Rocket.Chat opens a new world of possibilities, for instance, it allows your agents to improve the relationship with your customers through follow-up calls and learn about the service experience they received from your team. Or even boost your sales pipeline by creating new contacts and initiating calls immediately.

With the call dialer, a feature that is now part of our VoIP offering, live Agents will be able to initiate internal and external calls from the UI and communicate with internal extensions or external phone numbers. And you can also improve your team's efficiency through Click-to-Call components initiating calls from anywhere.

‍Learn more here and stay tuned for the upcoming releases. There will be much more to come on VoIP in the subsequent launches.

🚀 Please visit the official release notes for the whole list of improvements and bug fixes in the latest versions.‍

🚀 Check all improvements in the latest mobile app release here.

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As we progress towards developing the world's most flexible and secure open-source communications platform, we have some exciting features in the works for this quarter. Recently we hosted a live session during which our CEO, Gabriel Engel, and VP of Product, Christopher Skelly, revealed new features, improvements, and integrations for the rest of 2022. Here's what it looks like for security-conscious organizations.

How to update your workspace to the latest Rocket.Chat version?

SaaS workspaces

The release happens automatically on our cloud, so no further action is required from your side. However, remember that upgrading instances might take a few weeks, so don't hesitate to contact our support team if you need to update your version sooner. 

Self-managed workspaces

Depending on the installation mode, you might need to update your server manually. Check out our documentation for instructions.

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