Zoom enhances hybrid work solutions to make teamwork more meaningful

Today on the mainstage during the Zoomtopia keynote, Zoom unveiled innovative solutions to help businesses evolve their approach to hybrid work and collaboration, including a new Workvivo integration and enhancements to Zoom Meetings, Zoom Spaces, and Zoom Huddles.

“Hybrid work has evolved, and Zoom’s collaboration platform is evolving with it — through Zoom Docs, Zoom Spaces, Workvivo, and more, this is just the beginning,” said Smita Hashim, chief product officer at Zoom. “With these enhancements to the Zoom platform, Zoom customers will be able to easily adapt their businesses and tackle the challenges of hybrid work, while engaging their employees and strengthening their culture.”

Hybrid solutions that work for users, not the other way around

Today’s hybrid work environment presents many challenges around hybrid work — ensuring employees are engaged and productive, creating a sense of connection across teams, and maintaining equity and inclusiveness when teammates are dispersed. Zoom is continuing to build and enhance products to address these challenges inherent to building an effective hybrid work environment, whether employees are in the office full time, working from home part time, or fully remote.

Name tags

For meeting attendees, it can be frustrating to see the name of a Zoom Room rather than an individual’s name on-screen. With name tags, those in the Zoom Room can have their name displayed along with their video during a meeting. Name tags is expected to be generally available in 2024.

Dynamic Layouts for Zoom Rooms

With Dynamic Layouts for Zoom Rooms, it’s easier to follow a conversation between on-screen colleagues. Now available in Beta, users can view an enlarged visual of active participants when they’re conversing together. Viewers will see video frames shift dynamically in real time as participants raise their hands or begin speaking, so colleagues know where to focus their attention. Dynamic Layouts for Zoom Rooms is expected to be generally available in December 2023.

Companion Zoom Rooms

In-office workers can now pair a Zoom Rooms for Touch device with a Zoom Room for added functionality. Available in Beta, Companion Zoom Rooms can be configured to use the companion device’s display, speakers, and camera as additional resources during meetings, reducing overall system cost and maximizing flexibility. Companion Zoom Rooms is expected to be generally available in 2024.

Visitor Management

Soon to be in private Beta, Visitor Management gives organizations the ability to check in and manage visitors at their facility locations. Admins can set the guidelines for inviting visitors, including which questionnaires to fill out and photos to upload, designate who can invite visitors, and view reporting. Employees can invite visitors to their workplace, get their guest badge printed, receive registration notifications, and easily reserve a space for them through Workspace Reservation. Guests can complete necessary forms, add a photo, and check in at a kiosk, and workplace operations teams will receive detailed metrics on guests’ space usage and access times. Visitor Management is expected to be generally available in December 2023.

Workspace Reservation Wayfinding

Zoom’s Workspace Reservation already leverages AI to suggest in-office seats close to teammates, and in 2024, it will allow users to find their own reserved desk via the Zoom mobile app, better locate colleagues, and offer new presence options so employees can find where coworkers are in the office and join them for in-person collaboration.

Workspace Dashboard

To help with space planning and hybrid schedules, Zoom is introducing Workspace Dashboard. With the ability to view a snapshot of future office capacity and details of future reservations, Workspace Dashboard will provide admins with enhanced metrics for better space utilization. Workspace Dashboard is expected to be generally available in 2024.

Zoom Rooms Help Button

Users in Zoom Rooms will have the ability to contact IT via a help button in the Zoom Rooms interface. Admins can configure the button to contact any number through Zoom Contact Center or Zoom Phone. The Zoom Rooms help button is expected to be generally available in December 2023.

Pro AV for Zoom Rooms

Audio/Visual (AV) teams will soon be able to easily manage multiple physical and virtual audio and video streams with Pro AV for Zoom Rooms. Featuring a wide range of hardware support and partners for cameras and controllers, Pro AV is designed for AV experts who are integrating the Zoom platform into large, custom events. Pro AV for Zoom Rooms is expected to be available in Beta in December 2023 and generally available in spring 2024.

Intelligent Director

Now generally available, intelligent director is a new feature that enhances connection and optimizes the conference room experience for hybrid work, using multiple cameras to give every participant their own frame and best visual angle in Zoom Meetings. Intelligent director now supports two or three cameras, with the ability to set it up in a range of small, medium, and large rooms. Additionally, intelligent director supports newly certified cameras and provides general support for all Zoom Rooms-enabled cameras, along with easier room setup and improved calibration.

Zoom Scheduler

Users can incorporate single-use booking links in Scheduler to maintain control of their calendar, add customized booking page logos to offer a consistent brand experience, and add multiple-account support to check availability across multiple accounts. In the future, users will be able to incorporate hosts’ unique availabilities to eliminate the need for specific calendars for different teams or regions. Users will also be able to delegate so executive assistants or other support members can book for others and integrate Salesforce directly into Scheduler so that meeting records from Zoom Scheduler automatically sync with Salesforce.

Team Chat

In Team Chat, users will see tabs for channels, so the channel members can access and collaborate on apps, whiteboards, notes, and other resources easily in one place. Additionally, users will have dedicated chat spaces for their organizations, communities, and projects, with shared workspaces for closer collaboration and better access control. Apps in tabs and shared workspaces are expected to be generally available in the first half of 2024.

Zoom Clips

Expected to be generally available later this year, Zoom Clips will allow users to easily record, edit, and share high-fidelity short-form video messages, both internally and externally. Zoom Clips is designed to help teams communicate asynchronously, cut down on the number of meetings, and reduce lost time on ambiguous communication.

Elevate employee experiences to empower teams

In this era of hybrid work, when teams are striking the balance between working from different geographic locations and returning to the office, keeping employees engaged and informed can be challenging. Zoom’s employee experience (EX) capabilities can help address these challenges.

Employee Engagement

With teams dispersed and hybrid, employee engagement remains a challenge for businesses, with six in ten employees “quiet quitting,” according to Gallup’s most recent study. With these challenges, it’s more important than ever to develop a strong employee engagement strategy, and now users will have access to Workvivo directly from the Zoom client. Acquired by Zoom earlier this year, Workvivo is an employee engagement and communications solution that provides new ways to help keep employees informed, excited, and connected in today’s hybrid work model. Workvivo’s integration into the Zoom client, coming later this fall, will allow employees to engage with colleagues directly from Zoom, wherever they may be. Users can now also launch Meetings or start a Team Chat with a colleague directly from Workvivo.

Workvivo Employee Insights

Workvivo customers will also have access to Employee Insights, a new employee listening and survey suite within the Workvivo platform, where administrators can get regular, detailed feedback and act on it — all in one place. Employee Insights brings together data and survey feedback and includes modular surveys to closely track employee engagement drivers. It allows organizations to get real-time and long-term feedback, with the added benefit of Workvivo analytics to give a robust picture of how engaged their employees are. Employee Insights is expected to be available in November 2023.

Huddles for hybrid employees

Huddles are virtual coworking spaces that bring employees together across both in-office and remote teams. Now, Zoom has introduced presence indicators and seating information to My Office View, so you know when the colleagues you collaborate closely with are in a Huddle or in the office. Teammates in a chat channel will also be able to easily elevate their Team Chat conversation to a live huddle. My Office View in Huddles is expected to be generally available in 2024.

Make meetings more productive

Zoom Meetings is where so much collaboration happens in real-time, and Zoom is making meetings more effective with streamlined ways for users to communicate, collaborate, and share information.

Enhanced Meetings tab

The Meetings tab is becoming a central hub for the entire meeting journey to help you enhance effectiveness before, during, and after meetings. With the integration of Calendar, Scheduler, and Notes, the new view can help users easily find a time for a meeting, prepare agendas, and link to content for review before the meeting. For effective follow-up after the meeting, the new Meetings tab also makes it easy to search for assets and review action items by including related items like the Meeting summary, next steps, recordings, chats, and whiteboards on the Meeting detail page.

Zoom Mesh for Meetings

As more employees come into the office, having sufficient bandwidth is important for effective collaboration. With the planned launch of Zoom Mesh for Meetings in 2024, organizations may be able to reduce bandwidth usage by 20% or more during meetings when many participants are predominantly concentrated in a few office locations.

Global search

Spend less time preparing for meetings by easily finding the documents and chats needed for reference with the new global search functionality, which will allow users to gather important information from across Zoom products like Team Chat and Whiteboard, and third-party apps, all from the search box in the Zoom client. Global search is expected to be available in 2024.

For more information on how Zoom is powering flexible collaboration, watch Zoomtopia live on October 3–4.

About Zoom

Zoom is an all-in-one intelligent collaboration platform that makes connecting easier, more immersive, and more dynamic for businesses and individuals. Zoom technology puts people at the center, enabling meaningful connections, facilitating modern collaboration, and driving human innovation through solutions like team chat, phone, meetings, omnichannel cloud contact center, smart recordings, whiteboard, and more, in one offering. Founded in 2011, Zoom is publicly traded (NASDAQ:ZM) and headquartered in San Jose, California. Get more info at zoom.com.

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