UCaaS Platform: What's New for Meetings, Phone & Webinars

Zoomtopia 2020 is bringing a whole suite of platform enhancements that are designed to provide more immersive, secure, and collaborative experiences. Take a look at all the capabilities Zoom is rolling out across Zoom Meetings, Zoom Phone, and Zoom Webinars. 

Immersive scenes: Immersive scenes will allow the host to set a custom background theme for their meetings or create layouts where participant videos are embedded within a scene that everyone shares, like a classroom or courtroom.

New meeting reactions & animations: Zoom will have new animated reactions to make nonverbal communication more noticeable and fun. These animations will also include an audio element (e.g. sound of clapping).

Video Waiting Rooms: Hosts will be able to see a guest’s video when they’re in the Waiting Room, allowing them to see who it is before admitting them into the meeting. This new, enhanced security feature will be available early next year.

Recording Highlights: Using artificial intelligence and natural language processing, Zoom cloud recording will be able to extract key insights from your recording transcripts and make it easy to review the meeting highlights, without having to watch the entire recording.

High-Fidelity Audio: Released last month, Zoom now offers High-Fidelity Music Mode in addition to background noise suppression. Announced today is that Zoom is planning to use AI so that the hi-fi mode will turn on automatically. 

Nomadic E911 for Zoom Phone: Zoom Phone has added new features to E911 to help provide peace of mind in the event of an emergency. If a 911 call is dialed from Zoom Phone, it will alert internal safety team members and E911 dispatchers simultaneously. The designated internal safety team member also gets an alert on Zoom Team Chat. A safety team member can listen in and then connect to the call to offer assistance to the person who needs help, or to provide additional instruction to the emergency responders. To assist the emergency responders further, the safety team can trigger Zoom Rooms Digital Signage to help locate the person needing help. Nomadic E911 is available today, with support for Zoom Rooms Digital Signage expected to be released in beta by the end of 2020. 

Zoom Phone Team SMS: Zoom is taking SMS text-based messaging to the next level with Team SMS. Members of a call queue will be able to transfer text responses between team members, which will reduce duplicate responses and provide an escalation path. Zoom Phone SMS is currently in beta with general availability planned by the end of 2020, with Team SMS planned for early 2021. 

AI-powered spam detection and blocking: Zoom Phone admins will be able to set a threshold for artificial intelligence-based identification of potential spam calls. The system can be configured to route spam calls to voicemail or block them automatically, helping to significantly filter out unwanted calls. This capability is planned for beta in November 2020 and general availability in early 2021. 

Support for up to 42 countries and territories: Zoom Phone now offers telephone numbers to 42 countries and territories, with more being added soon, including South Africa to be added next week. 

Audience reactions: Empower your webinar attendees to share reactions in real-time. Reactions for Zoom Webinars give immediate feedback to the presenter and allow the audience to feel more engaged.

Customized lobby: We will be adding customized lobbies to our existing branding functionality so you can deliver a consistent, branded experience for your customers, with a cohesive look and feel throughout every aspect of the experience — from pre-event emails, to the lobby, to in-event, as well as after the webinar.

Lower thirds: Zoom will be adding a professional, clean way to identify speakers within the webinar session with graphics and text overlying the video.

Breakout Rooms for webinars: Zoom announced that Breakout Rooms will be added to Zoom Webinars

. Attendees can connect and network in smaller interactive groups within the webinar session.

Debrief room: The debrief room is a trusted and secure way for webinar hosts and panelists to collaborate after the webinar is over. Speakers will be able to share notes immediately after the webinar, while ideas and feedback are fresh in their head, without having to schedule and launch a separate meeting.

Make sure you explore all the additional platform enhancements Zoom announced at Zoomtopia 2020. 

• Read about Zoom’s end-to-end encryption offering
• Find out how Zoom is helping customers re-enter offices safely and enable hybrid workforces
• Learn about OnZoom, Zoom’s new event marketplace
• Find out how our new Zoom Apps enhance your Zoom meeting experience with third-party integrations

Check out our Zoomtopia livestream today and tomorrow to learn more about how Zoom is enabling today’s evolving workplace and workforce. 

Please note: products or functionality mentioned in this post are subject to change at Zoom’s sole discretion and may not be delivered as planned or at all. Customers who purchase from Zoom should make their purchase decisions based upon currently available pricing, features, and functions.

Editor's note: This post was updated Oct. 28 to reflect the Zoom Apps product name change.