During a conference call our party heard the tone that indicates a caller had dropped off. We did a roll call several minutes later and everybody was still present. There is still uncertainty as to exactly what happened and it is possible that everything was fine, but this highlighted an issue: there is/was no way to verify the attendees either in real time or through call logs. Had an unknown user with the participant code been sitting on the call?
The conference host does have the command of *#2 - this will indicate how many people are on the line. This is an okay security feature but it could be improved by knowing who is dialed in.
The host also has *#7 to toggle the ability to Block access to the conference line. This is also an okay feature but can be improved by allowing the host to terminate the connection of a specific attendee.
The call log in the Admin Portal does not record Inbound calls to that conference line, so from the user side there was no way to verify the number of attendees after the fact. I did call support in an attempt to see if they could verify this information and apparently they could not. This indicates that participant code entries (and/or associate caller ID info) on a conference line are not logged anywhere.
This brings to light three separate security features that could greatly improve the product:
1. Real-time monitoring of attendees (via the RingCentral app?). Additional to this would be giving the Participant Host real-time access control by allowing or terminating access to specific attendees.
2. Post-Call log information, much like the standard call log, that would show the numbers that dialed in to the conference line with time/date stamps. Accessible from the Admin Portal.
3. The ability to change the Host and Participant codes assigned to our account. Much like being able to change a password, this would help ensure the integrity of our account over time.
