Zoom Introduces Waiting Room Chat, The Ability To Stop Incoming Video, And More

Zoom is introducing new features, including new Zoom Events conference capabilities, attendance status for Zoom Meetings, and more. 

Last week, Zoom unveiled a suite of new product updates to enhance critical business communications and empower distributed teams. The announcement came just days after the release of two major releases that same week.

First, Zoom announced the general availability of React Native for Zoom’s Video SDK, enabling developers to write code once and build fully customizable video-based applications for Android and iOS devices.

Then, it announced the ability to host a conference on Zoom Events, giving license holders the ability to host their own multi-day and multi-session conferences, with new support for session streaming to the lobby – with enhanced sponsor and networking features.

Related | Zoom Announces New Features In Chat, Meetings, And Rooms

Following these two announcements, the company is now releasing new capabilities to improve the business communications experience on Zoom Events, Zoom Meetings, and more.

Last month, Zoom talked about releasing features to enhance communications for remote teams during its Zoomtopia conference but has only now announced that they’re being rolled out.

Specifically, Zoom is improving its in-meeting experience in the following ways:

1. Meeting hosts now have more options to create polls, including ranked responses, matching, short and long answers, and fill in the blank, creating more opportunities for gaining feedback and insights from team members.
2. Meeting attendees can now stop all incoming video from appearing on their screens. Stopping incoming video can help photo-sensitive people avoid overstimulation from viewing multiple video participants and can also preserve bandwidth for screen sharing.
3. Auto-generated captions are now available on all free Zoom Meetings accounts.
4. Hosts will soon be able to check attendance status and see whether everyone who accepted the meeting invitation has joined the meeting and send a quick chat to check on their status, allowing you to start meetings faster and avoid wasting time at the start of a meeting.
5. Participants can now engage in a two-way chat with meeting hosts in the meeting Waiting Room.
6. Zoom is now optimized for Apple’s new MacBook Pro, including the new M1 Pro and M1 Max, and provides an optimized, full-screen experience on the new Liquid Retina XDR display.

In addition, Zoom is also providing updates to its cloud phone offering to provide users with greater flexibility in their communications and help them get more done together.

With a new Integration with IFTTT and Zendesk, users can now create automated workflows between Zoom Phone and 600+ pre-integrated apps, including tools like Zoho, Airtable, Notion, Jira, Box, and Dropbox. In addition, Zoom Phone users can also seamlessly receive and make phone calls from within Zendesk, avoiding the need to switch applications constantly.

Finally, the company is also expanding certified hardware options for Zoom Phone.