New From Zoom: Blur Background, Zoom Phone Power Pack and Expanded Availability in 46 Countries

Over the last year, we’ve delivered hundreds of feature updates to our platform, and with our latest round of updates, we’re continuing our effort to bring you the innovative features that streamline workflows and create flexible, effective communication and collaboration.

These updates include new hardware support for Zoom Rooms; expanded purchase plans; availability, integrations, and features for Zoom Phone; as well as a new video background option for Zoom Meetings.

Here’s a roundup of the main updates:

• Zoom Phone Power Pack: Designed to support a variety of Zoom Phone users, the Power Pack add-on offers a sleek desktop experience with a persistent awareness panel that allows employees handling consistent call velocity to easily manage calls with their teams and provide superior customer experience. With the Power Pack real-time analytics and historical reports on call queues, administrators can review calling data such as active, held, waiting, answered, and abandoned calls to make data-driven decisions surrounding call handling management. 

• Integration with Microsoft Teams: With our updated integration in Microsoft Teams, you can now initiate high-quality Zoom Phone calls with contacts from chat and channels, as well as make calls to external numbers.

• Expanded local PSTN: We’ve added local PSTN in Israel and Turkey, expanding Zoom Phone’s availability to 46 countries and territories. 

• New plans: We’re offering two new plans, including Global Toll-Free, which provides domestic toll-free service in 29 countries, and Global Select Metered, which serves as a ‘pay-as-you-go’ option to complement the existing Global Select Unlimited plan that is currently available. 

• Blur Background: Zoom pioneered virtual backgrounds, and even added video virtual backgrounds, slide shares as virtual background, and using virtual backgrounds in Zoom Rooms. Today, we’re proud to bring a Blur Background option to your meetings and webinars. This option can be selected on the desktop under the “choose virtual background” menu from the “start video” icon in your Zoom Meeting.

Webinar File Share: Hosts and/or panelists can now share documents with attendees through chat during a live webinar. Files can be uploaded directly or shared from popular cloud storage sites such as Box, Dropbox, Google Drive, and SharePoint. 

• Logitech Rally Bar Appliance: The Logitech Rally Bar Appliance is pre-configured with Zoom Rooms and is built for medium-sized meeting rooms, with options to scale the appliance for larger settings with optional mic pods. Zoom Rooms hardware is great for video enabling your meeting spaces and supporting hybrid work, be sure to check out this blog post for other Zoom Rooms updates for office re-entry.

For additional info on all recent updates, check out our Release Notes. If you’d like to learn more about any of these features, sign up for a customized 1-on-1 demo with a product specialist today.