Zoom expands platform with new innovations to enhance team collaboration and customer experiences

New products and expanded capabilities help teams stay efficient, productive, and connected from wherever they are.

ICYMI, Zoom is so much more than meetings – it’s your tool for advancing human connection from wherever you are. And at this year’s Zoomtopia, we’re introducing exciting new platform innovations to make connecting, staying organized, and getting work done easier than ever.

Introducing Zoom Mail and Calendar

We’re taking another step forward to help users seamlessly access the tools they need directly in the easy-to-use Zoom app. With Zoom Mail and Calendar Clients, users get even more communication and collaboration capabilities in Zoom One and reduce the “toggle tax.” Users can work more efficiently, quickly access their communications, and easily schedule and join meetings–all from Zoom!

The Zoom Mail and Calendar Services are targeted at small-to medium-business customers who particularly value email privacy. The Zoom Mail Service provides end-to-end-encrypted email when messages are sent directly between active Zoom Mail Service users, and the Zoom Calendar Service includes an appointment booking feature, an easy way for participants to select an available time to meet on Zoom. For more information on Zoom Mail and Calendar, read our announcement blog.

The “together” spot for when you’re not physically together

Introducing Zoom Spots

We understand the need for connection and simplified communication in a hybrid work world, and one thing we have learned is that people miss spontaneous conversations and collaboration when they worked side-by-side. To help make those connections easier and bridge the gap between workers in different locations, we’re introducing a human-centered approach to virtual interaction – Zoom Spots.

Coming in early 2023, Zoom Spots is Zoom’s virtual coworking space. It is designed to foster inclusive discussions, bringing the fluid interactions of in-person work to distributed, hybrid teams throughout their work day. Zoom Spots replicates the “working alongside” aspect of an open office for workers and encourages free-form video-first conversations.

Better collaboration through Zoom One

The Zoom One offering provides versatile tools to help teams communicate and collaborate fluidly, and Zoom Spaces help optimize office space and bring hybrid teams together. With enhancements across Zoom Team Chat, Whiteboard, Rooms, Phone, Meetings, and more, it’s easier to connect, stay organized, and get work done.

Zoom Team Chat

Central to Zoom One is Zoom Team Chat, the messaging solution that powers connected collaboration. Expected soon, you’ll see in-meeting chats and Team Chats come together in one place. If enabled, meeting conversations will be available in Team Chat under a group chat dedicated to the meeting to reference or keep conversations going. Never worry about following up and asking for links shared in meetings again!

We also plan to roll out Team Chat translations next year to enable global teams to develop shared understanding faster, work together more efficiently, and enable greater inclusivity. And soon, you’ll be able to schedule a chat to be sent at a later time, to better align with a team member’s time zone, working hours, and out-of-office plans.

Zoom Phone

We’re redefining what a cloud-based business phone solution can do for your organization, with new ways to simplify the experience through Zoom Phone. For employees juggling calls throughout their busy workdays, we’re bringing Phone and Team Chat together, so it’s easier to continuously collaborate throughout the day. For example, when working with a group of colleagues to answer calls in Power Pack—our solution for small team handling—a chat can be created as part of each queue. Additionally, users can also use one-click chat messages when they’re unable to answer calls.

We are also adding support for a web-based phone client and a Progressive Web App (PWA) for ChromeOS. This will enable anyone to use Zoom Phone, and is especially helpful for businesses with remote and seasonal workers so they can function with devices like Chromebooks.

Zoom Meetings

We’re making Zoom Meetings even better! We’re bringing even more video and recording capabilities to our flagship Zoom Meetings product.

• Smart Recordings: Powered by Zoom IQ, the Smart Recordings feature makes meeting recordings more consumable with summaries, next steps, and smart chapters, so you can quickly jump to the moments that matter and take action.

• Meeting Templates: Easily customize different types of meetings, such as training sessions or all-hands meetings. These templates will automatically configure the right settings for your meetings.
• Avatars: Choose from extended Animal Avatars, Human Avatars, and even Meta Avatars to help you customize how “virtual you” shows up in meetings.

• Video Clips: Create videos with the ability to narrate and record yourself sharing your screen. These videos can be shared with teammates to communicate on projects and are stored centrally for future reference.

Zoom Rooms

For those who come into the office, we continue to optimize and expand your workspace capabilities with several new enhancements to Zoom Rooms.

• Workspace Reservation Smart Suggestions: When booking a room or desk in an office, Smart Suggestions will help you decide where to sit and what days to come into the office based on whom you have been working with, where you normally sit, and where your team sits.
• Intelligent Director (private beta): Expected to be available later this year, Intelligent Director leverages multiple in-room cameras, with video streams of in-room participants from different angles, and selects the best video stream to share in the meeting. Intelligent Director will even adjust for participants as they move.

• Companion Whiteboard: Soon, you will be able to seamlessly pair your whiteboard with Zoom Rooms to add and share Zoom Whiteboard capabilities in the meeting.
• Zoom Interop for Google Meet: Provides a way for Zoom Rooms to call into Google Meet meetings, and Google Meet rooms to call into Zoom Meetings.

Zoom innovations transform the customer journey

With customer experience determining brand loyalty more than ever, Zoom is committed to helping you deliver the platinum standard for every experience across the customer journey. That’s why we’re unveiling innovative new features across our contact center, sales, and event solutions.

Zoom Virtual Agent

Imagine resolving up to 50% of your customer requests without involvement from your contact center agents. You’ll soon be able to deliver that and more with our new intelligent self-service offering, Zoom Virtual Agent.

Leveraging expertise and technology from our Solvvy acquisition, Zoom Virtual Agent is a conversational AI and chatbot solution that uses natural language processing and machine learning to interpret what your customers are asking, regardless of how they happen to word their questions. Zoom Virtual Agent then provides instant, accurate responses–by tapping into your knowledge bases, FAQs, and other data sources – and intelligently guides your customers to the right resolution, or if needed, to the right agent.

Zoom Virtual Agent works around the clock on multiple support channels to deliver fast, personalized customer experiences, reduce call volumes to human agents, and drive significant operational efficiencies for businesses. Zoom Virtual Agent can be integrated with Zoom Contact Center and other leading CRM and contact center solutions and will be available in early 2023.

Zoom IQ for Sales

Coaching and practice are key to developing a powerful sales force, but there aren’t enough hours in the day for sales managers to provide extensive 1:1 training to each and every rep. Coming soon, the Virtual Coach will simulate a variety of selling situations to give sellers a practice environment to hone their pitch, obtain feedback, and receive real-time content tips for future calls with prospects.

Zoom Events and Webinars

Event organizers and hosts are looking for more ways to drive ROI through events, produce highly branded and professional content, drive engagement, and take their events hybrid. In the next few months, new features will be launched like Production Studio, Simulive, 1:1 networking, and many more to help event and marketing professionals make the most out of their hybrid and virtual experiences.

Now that employees around the world are heading back to their offices, we’re all using more video communication for events and webinars than we ever did before 2020, causing network bandwidth constraints for large corporate offices.

IT administrators are looking for solutions to optimize network bandwidth, so we’re thrilled to announce Zoom Mesh, Zoom’s own eCDN solution. Our peer-to-peer offering doesn’t require any further components to be deployed and can be launched right from the Zoom client with minimal buffering, or delays while optimizing bandwidth. It’s a seamless experience for all users and will be available by the end of the year.

Tune in to Zoomtopia now!

You can learn more about these new innovations (and more) designed to empower your teams and transform work throughout Zoomtopia. To keep up with the latest Zoom platform updates, tune into Zoomtopia, subscribe to the Zoom Blog, or follow our Release Notes.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in November 2022 and has been updated on February 27, 2023, to reflect the general availability of Zoom Mail and Calendar.