From announcing upgrades to the viewing area of video-conferencing platforms to a CEO leaving, here are some extracts from popular news stories this week.
Slack CEO to Leave the Company
Slack Founder and CEO Stewart Butterfield has confirmed that he will leave the company in January 2023.
As confirmed by Slack, his replacement will be Lidiane Jones, an Executive Vice President at Salesforce.
Following her appointment, Jones tweeted: “Today is a new and exciting day for me, @SlackHQ and @Salesforce.“I am proud to be named Slack’s new CEO, accepting the baton from the thoughtful and innovative found @Stewart [Butterfield].
“Thank you @Stewart [Butterfield] for what you’ve built and for trusting me with the most important of my life. Simply put, there would be no Slack without Stewart.
“He’s built an incredible company that has redefined modern collaboration with a team grounded in humility and innovation.
“As we look forward, we are grounded by Slack’s mission: to make people’s working lives simpler, more pleasant and more productive.
“We have so much opportunity to bring the digital HQ to every Salesforce customer and many more as we continue to grow together.”
Microsoft has released Communities in Microsoft Teams to allow users to maintain human connections and community within the hybrid world.
The platform is designed to boost connections and collaboration and encourage Teams users to share ideas and thoughts.
Manik Gupta, Corporate Vice President, Microsoft Teams, Product, said: “The ways in which we interact with one another have certainly shifted over the last few years.
“Thanks to technology, we have the ability to work from almost anywhere and minimise nonessential face-to-face appointments.
“But some things haven’t changed in a hybrid world: our need for human connection and community.
“We’re excited to announce communities in Microsoft Teams — a new experience that enables people to come together, connect, share, and collaborate.”
Microsoft has made it possible for users to do what they already do in Teams while in a community.
What makes communities different is that it will be easier than ever to share ideas and organise things such as events.
With the new Microsoft Teams community experience, users can do the following:
- Post messages to everyone in the group
- Organise events within the community and add them to a community calendar for everyone to view
- Users can share and store documents that are dedicated to that community’s activity
- Community members can filter content quickly to access photos, videos, events, and links
RingCentral Expands Encryption Support to Phone and Messaging
RingCentral has expanded its End-to-End Encryption (E2EE) beyond video conferencing to include phone and messaging within its flagship RingCentral MVP product.
The E2EE technology prevents unauthorised third parties from accessing a user’s communication content.
By expanding its E2EE technology, RingCentral can ensure that it provides enterprise-grade confidentiality across chats, calls, and meetings.
Michael Armer, Chief Information Security Officer at RingCentral, said: “With RingCentral’s E2EE for video, and soon, phone calls and messaging, organisations can leverage RingCentral’s native capabilities to simplify their technology stack with one offering.
“We believe our approach to end-to-end encryption across message, video, and phone is truly differentiated and represents the most complete deployment of E2EE for enterprise communications to date.
“People exchange millions of calls and messages a day on RingCentral’s platform.
“With our new E2EE, we’re extending enterprise-grade privacy and security controls for our customers, giving them the freedom to have confidential conversations across any mode.”
RingCentral’s expansion of its E2EE technology means there is now support for large groups rather than just one-to-one communication across message, video and phone.
Zoom Revamps Viewing and Chat Experience for Rooms