Zoom productivity features can transform any workplace into a performance powerhouse. Far more than just a video conferencing tool, Zoom has proven to be an incredible digital work hub. With 300 million daily active users, Zoom empowers and synchronizes teams worldwide.
Like many UCaaS and CCaaS vendors, Zoom is committed to regularly updating its toolkit. In recent years alone, we’ve seen an increase in AI-powered solutions on the platform and valuable contact center services.
The question is, which tools and features should you be using specifically to improve your team’s performance? Today, we’re looking at some of the top Zoom productivity features every business leader should use.
The Top Zoom Productivity Features
Ranked as a leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant, Zoom is an all-in-one toolkit for modern work. It combines email and CRM integrations, calendar solutions, meeting functionality, and chat. Today, we’re focusing on the Zoom productivity features that help businesses accomplish more with their time.
1. Zoom IQ: AI-Driven Zoom Productivity Features
Microsoft has Copilot; Zoom has Zoom IQ. Powered by the latest generative AI technology, Zoom IQ is an intelligent assistant capable of assisting users with various tasks. The solution can instantly summarize what users miss in a meeting, with highlights and chapters of conversations.
Zoom can also post recaps directly to Zoom chat and fill whiteboards with valuable information. Plus, it can suggest action items after meetings to keep everyone on the same page. With Zoom IQ, businesses can quickly draft intelligent messages using the “Team Chat Compose” feature.
There’s also a solution that allows users to rapidly organize their ideas, create meeting agendas, and more with simple, natural prompts. If you’re looking to speed up performance, Zoom IQ is ideal.
2. Screen Sharing and Annotation
Screen sharing is a powerful Zoom productivity feature designed to help users bring more context into meetings. With screen sharing, hosts and participants can share specific applications, their full screen, or a portion of their screen in seconds.
Plus, during a screen-sharing session, users can enable annotations. This lets meeting attendees and hosts type and draw on the shared screen to draw attention to specific areas. There’s a built-in intelligent recognition option to turn wonky lines and shapes into straight ones.
Users can also save their screens with annotations to revisit them later. There’s even a handy “spotlight” icon to pinpoint parts of your shared screen.
3. Calendars and Scheduling
We all have schedules to manage. Fortunately, Zoom makes it easy to keep track of your to-do list. With Zoom, you don’t have to jump out of your meeting into different apps when you want to explore your schedule. Both calendar and mail apps are built into the Zoom desktop and mobile apps.
You can even link Zoom to your preferred tools, like Google Calendar and Outlook if you already use your organization platforms. Zoom also allows users to customize their screen, showing their calendar at all times, whether chatting, drawing on a whiteboard, or engaging in a meeting.
You can schedule meetings directly from your calendar. Zoom’s “Appointment Scheduler” makes it easy to plan meetings intelligently. The solution automatically showcases availability across every platform or application participants use. You’ll even be able to send automated notifications and reminders to everyone involved in your meeting.
4. Zoom Breakout Rooms
One of the most popular Zoom productivity features on this list, Zoom breakout rooms inspire more effective collaboration and brainstorming sessions. In breakout rooms, hosts can arrange people into sub-groups in a meeting, manually or automatically.
Users are then filtered into these rooms during quick conversational sessions, where they can discuss specific tasks and action items. As well as being ideal for short discussion groups, breakout rooms are fantastic for team bonding. You can create up to 50 breakout rooms at once.
What’s more, there are options to pre-assign attendees to specific breakout rooms, reducing the amount of work you need to do in the meeting itself.
5. Whiteboards: Creative Zoom Productivity Features
Maintaining high levels of productivity in the workplace means offering users plenty of different ways to share ideas. Creative teams sometimes need visual prompts to make the most of their work. That’s where Zoom whiteboards come in.
The Zoom whiteboard feature gives participants an infinite canvas to draw, add text, upload images, and more. When necessary, the host maintains complete control over the whiteboard, ensuring too many people don’t start drawing at once.
Users can also save whiteboards and add them to the cloud, so it’s easy to jump back into a brainstorming session anytime.
6. Intelligent Zoom Meetings
Zoom Meetings are one of the platform's core components, and they’re brimming with tools to make your workforce more productive. Users can join meetings anytime, anywhere, and plenty of security options are built-in to protect your assets.
Zoom Meeting also comes with built-in intelligent tools for collaboration and productivity. There’s the option to record meetings and transform them into transcripts for employees automatically. Zoom’s caption translation tools make it easy to host multi-lingual conversations.
The feature, currently available in various languages, reduces the need for third-party integrations and interpreters. However, for those with disabilities, Zoom also offers an option to add language interpreters to every meeting or webinar.
7. Zoom Integrations and Apps
The less your employees need to toggle between apps throughout the day, the more productive they’ll be. Zoom’s integrations and apps make bringing everything together in one place easy. For users of Zoom One, there’s even a curated selection of Essential apps available for free.
Zoom’s ultra-flexible ecosystem includes a comprehensive marketplace where you can search through integration and add-ons for your favorite tools. Options range from integrations with collaboration apps like Slack to connectors for Salesforce.
There’s a host of great tools available specifically for boosting productivity, too, such as AI notetakers, Asana for Project management, and more.
