Zoom has announced a new set of features at its Zoomtopia 2021 conference, including a virtual whiteboard, live transcription, and more.
Earlier this week, at its annual Zoomtopia conference, Zoom announced the launch of a series of new products, features and partnerships designed to empower and engage the modern workforce.
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Zoom Whiteboard
The Zoom Whiteboard is a virtual hub that acts as a digital canvas, allowing seamless, real-time, and asynchronous collaboration. It allows users to interact with the whiteboard in a way similar to being in-person, creating more visually engaging and efficient meeting experiences.
Live Translation and Transcription
To make its meetings more inclusive across borders and continents, Zoom will be introducing real time, automated translations, and expand on its transcriptions solution later next year. The platform already has a live transcription option, so the update will expand it using AI machine learning.
The upcoming launch will also include support for multiple languages.
Zoom and Oculus Integration
Zoom will be teaming up with Horizon Workrooms to bring the physical and virtual world together using Zoom. The goal is to allow users to access their Zoom Whiteboard and Zoom Meetings within the virtual Workrooms environment when this ships next year.
Zoom Video Engagement Center (VEC)
The new Zoom VEC tool is designed to connect experts with end customers via a live video which supports an additional immersive virtual environment. Zoom VEC will offer cloud-first scalability and a trusted video architecture.
The tool is meant to drive customer trust and loyalty.
Zoom Rooms Smart Gallery
To foster a more inclusive hybrid, remote, and colocated work experience, Zoom is also expanding the reach of Zoom Rooms Smart Gallery. The update will allow for meeting spaces of all sizes to have individual video feeds for in-room participants, so they’re viewed clearly and equally by remote employees.
Hot Desking Solution
Later this year, Zoom will release a hot desking solution that allows employees to reserve desks and spaces in their offices using an interactive map. Hot desking will also allow easy users authentication to bring their personal Zoom experience to any Zoom Rooms or Zoom Phone appliance.
Platform Security Enhancements
To empower customers to provision and manage their own security, Zoom is developing a Bring Your Own Key (BYOK) offering, with an initial beta planned for later this year. Additionally, Zoom plans to extend End-to-end encryption (E2EE) to Zoom Phone, potentially enabling users to upgrade to E2EE during one-on-one phone calls that occur via the Zoom client in the coming year.
Zoom Events Conference
Zoom plans to make a new event type available this fall on Zoom Events. According to the announcement, the new Zoom Events Conference will allow hosts to organize multi-track and multi-day events in a sophisticated format, with rich functionality.
They will have at their disposal chat, event lobby, networking, sponsors, surveys, recordings, analytics, and more. The Zoom Events Conference will offer hosts and attendees a customizable experience, with the ability to provide an engaging and connected virtual event experience.
Zoom Apps
Zoom is also planning on making the integration of Zoom Apps available throughout the platform later this year. The update will include Zoom Apps for Webinars, Zoom Apps for Mobile, and immersive apps, which will enable even more immersive and collaborative app experiences.
Zoom Widget
Intended to help users engage with meetings in a smarter way, the Zoom Widget will provide a view at-a-glance schedule, that could enable users to see who is already in the meeting, and notify the host using Zoom Chat if they are running late.
For people in back-to-back meetings, Zoom Widget will help them manage time, expectations, and keep their teammates in the know.
Zoom Chat Huddle View
Zoom Chat Huddle View will potentially provide a visual layout of channels to give teams a sense of connectedness while working virtually.
Channel members will potentially be able to choose a unique virtual background of their choice, chat, easily see who is in the channel, and quickly identify if they are busy or available.
Zoom Continuous Collaboration
Zoom is planning on releasing a Zoom Continuous Collaboration tool that could make it easier to collaborate across tools with tighter integrations across the Zoom platform and third parties.
With these planned enhancements, users would benefit from the ability to share files, recordings and chats from Zoom Meetings to Zoom Chat for easy reference and collaboration on documents and integration with file sharing solutions – all without having to leave the Zoom client.
Zoom Phone Video Voicemails
Zoom Phone Video Voicemails is planned to provide a more personable alternative to standard voicemails with the ability to leave video messages for colleagues, right into their voicemail inbox.
Zoom also announced it has surpassed 2 million Zoom Phone seats sold worldwide. Going from zero to 2 million licenses in just over two and a half years – and doubling from 1 million to 2 million paid seats in less than 9 months.