Zoom Workplace: New Branding, New Features
Zoom is now called Zoom Workplace. The name change reflects the added features that provide far more than a mere video conferencing platform. Zoom Workplace includes collaborative whiteboards, team chat, email and calendar applications, meeting scheduling and appointment booking, share notes, a word processor, video recording, a scheduler, and the AI companion. Many of these tools are available in the free version, though the storage, meeting duration, capacity, and other features are limited. Zoom also offers VoIP phones and an enhanced scheduler that integrates with Google and Microsoft 365 to create shareable bookable time slots.
Zoom Mail and Calendar Client
This new feature is not a substitute for a Gmail or Microsoft 365 account to handle email and calendaring. Rather, you use your existing email and calendar tools from within the Zoom app to schedule and join meetings, send a copy of an email to a Zoom Team Chat channel, and use it across desktop and mobile. The purpose described by Zoom for this feature is to help reduce the need to switch back and forth between apps.
Now from within Zoom you can view and manage emails and manage your calendar events from the Zoom desktop client. If you have a Basic or Pro account, Zoom Mail and Calendar is enabled by default. For Business and Enterprise accounts the features are disabled by default and require admin rights to enable.
Th Zoom mail and calendar client goes beyond integration to see your calendar. The “client” allows you to interact with and send email, create calendared events, and more directly from within Zoom, rather than switching back and forth between Zoom and Gmail or Outlook.
Scheduler
Whether you use Zoom Mail and Calendar Client or not, if you integrate your calendar app with Zoom you can use Scheduler. Scheduler is much like Microsoft Bookings, Calendly, Accuity, and scheduling apps you may already have. If you are not using one already you may investigate the Zoom Scheduler.
The Zoom Scheduler comes with all the bells and whistles of a paid scheduling app. You can create multiple booking pages, customize the email and SMS notifications sent to attendees, set availability and preferences for each type of booking page and more.
Zoom Docs
Instead of sharing or attaching a document to a Zoom meeting you can create a collaborative document within Zoom. The interface is very simple, but her are some interesting features. Especially interesting is the “Magical Key”. Type a forward slash (/) to insert media files, embed content from other places like Google Drive and YouTube and more. You can easily drag and drop content, comment, add callouts with dates and reminders for other collaborators by typing the @ symbol, add tables and checklists and more. Use if for meeting minutes, matter tracking, co-editing and other collaborative endeavors. You can also see a version history, resolve comments, engage the AI Companion, create templates and even find/replace. Lean more about Zoom docs in the User Guide.
If Zoom Docs seems like an opportunity to create content outside of your firm’s-controlled system you are right. An alternative is Zoom notes, which allows conference participants to collaborate within a meeting.
Zoom Clips
Now you can record, edit, and share short form videos with Zoom Clips. You do not have to create a meeting just to record a video capture for audio, screensharing and video. Just open the Zoom app and click on “Clips”. You can record, review, auto-transcribe and share your video clips. You can store your recordings in a content library and add tags and titles to find your clips more easily. Viewers can comment on videos.
While there are many ways to create and share videos, being able to use a familiar and simple tool might inspire you to create more videos to share content and explain concepts to clients or your team.
Team Chat
Team Chat in Zoom is very similar to functionality found in Microsoft Teams or Slack, as well as other products. You can create channels and chat, share documents, chat during a meeting or outside of a meeting, search chat, add bookmarks, reminders and even engage the AI companion to help you compose messages and generate summaries.
Team Chat is centered on internal communication, but you can add trusted external collaborators. This would be especially helpful as you work with co-counsel, experts, litigation support and eDiscovery consultants, and others outside the firm where you want to keep a running conversation without necessarily documenting everything via email.
Zoom Workflow Automations
Currently in BETA, workflow automation enables you to streamline workflows across Zoom services and third-party apps. You define a sequence of steps and actions to automate. Zoom describes this feature as “no code”, meaning that the interface is a simple wizard that doesn’t require any prerequisite knowledge. There are workflow templates, or you can build on yourself. Workflow templates and triggers are part of Team Chat, so you will need to be using Chat to leverage this feature. Examples of workflows include gathering information, sending a message based on a trigger, and sharing resources with users who join a channel.
Other Updates
The latest version of the Zoom client (software) is version 6.1.10 (45028). There are some new features that might come in handy.
- Sharing pre-attached assets in meeting by attaching files in advance or reuse them for future meetings. Right now, the only thing that can be easily pre-attached are whiteboards.
- Pre-configure upcoming breakout rooms during an active breakout session.
- Switch recording type during a Clips recording session to toggle between screen recording, camera-only, and combined screen and camera recording without stopping the recording session.
- Multi-speaker video layout dynamically adapts to highlight and enlarge the current speaker video tiles, while still displaying other participants.
- Multi-share during meetings enhancements includes tabs for organizing shared content and shares from iPhone, a second camera, or shared video files.
Conclusion
Zoom Workplace is expanding capabilities to remain competitive with similar tools like Microsoft Teams. For law firms using Google Workspaces, the updates to the Zoom Workplace may offer some of the features that expand Google Meet capabilities.
Learn more about features and functions in Zoom here:
Video Conferencing – You Have Options – North Carolina Bar Association
What’s New with Zoom? – North Carolina Bar Association
Zoom Updates You Should Know About – North Carolina Bar Association
Zoom Tips for Hosts and Participants – North Carolina Bar Association
Time to Manage Videoconferencing – North Carolina Bar Association