Zoom Goes Large at Zoomtopia

Here’s what’s happening with Zoom right now

Introducing End-to-End Encryption

Since the headache of Zoombombing earlier this year, the leaders at Zoom have been working non-stop to ensure their service is as safe and private as possible for customers. CEO, Eric Yuan, and the team are going above and beyond to eliminate the security concerns that may have turned brands away from Zoom in recent months. One of the latest updates is the arrival of end-to-end encryption, or “E2EE”. This feature is now available in technical preview.

Following up from the May announcement that Zoom would be including E2EE in its solution, the company is now ready to provide this extra security on top of a variety of other security features. The E2EE offering provides the same GCM encryption already available with Zoom. However, with this service, the meeting host generates encryption keys and uses cryptography from the public environment to distribute the keys to other participants.

Hosts can enable their E2EE settings at the group, account, and user level. All participants need to have this setting enabled to join the E2EE meeting. All participants must also join from the Zoom Rooms service, desktop client, or mobile app. Unfortunately, enabling E2EE will disable a few features in your meeting, like live transcription and recording. However, the service is available for all clients, including free users. Look for the E2EE shield logo with a padlock to check that your meeting is encrypted.

The Zoom Instant SDK

Zoom stands out as a flexible and open solution, which allows access to developers searching for video functionality. However, now, the company is expanding its SDK offering with a simpler solution designed for ease of use. Available at the end of October, there will now be different SDKs available. The customisable SDK enriches your video applications with Zoom platform controls, with free UI and session control.

The Meetings SDK integrates Zoom Meetings with your existing application workflows within the Zoom Meetings UI. Zoom’s customisable SDK also creates real-time video applications built on the Zoom platform. You can enrich apps with in-session chat, screen-sharing, streaming and more.

The customisable option is designed for reliability and flexibility, with support for up to 300 participants, and high-quality performance. Free UI and session control is available, along with access to raw HD audio and video integrations. You can even access support for multiple native mobile apps and development platforms.

Great for enhancing real-time engagement, developers can unlock features like audio and video streaming, screen sharing, and so much more. You can even use up to 10,000 minutes per month with no charge. Zoom believes this highly customisable SDK environment will transform what developers can accomplish in the collaboration world.

Zoom Cares: Committing to Sustainability

As part of Zoomtopia, Zoom wanted to show that it not only cares about customers, but it also values its developers, staff, and the whole planet too. Focusing on “care” as a core value, the company introduced Zoom Cares, a philanthropic solution that strives to give something back to education, social equity and managing climate change.

Zoom is focusing on supporting the world as we know it, starting with an educational component that will help to bypass some of the chaos caused by COVID-19 this year. Zoom Cares’ educational solution builds on the company’s commitment to provide education services for free to over 125,000 schools during the pandemic. The company also provided resources and training to more than 35,000 educators teaching remotely.

Investing more than $1.5 million to ensure that students remain safe and connected, the back-to-school remote learning grants from Zoom also help students all over the world to handle the stress of school closures. Zoom Cares will even be matching the donations made during Zoomtopia this year, up to a value of $250,000.

Aside from education, Zoom is also focusing on equity for all with it’s new caring strategy. The company donated $250,000 to the Association for African American History and Life. Zoom also donated more than $1.4 million to assist with COVID-19 response for people all around the world.

Zoom Cares is also part of Zoom’s ongoing sustainability program, which reduces the company’s impact on the environment. Zoom helped to reduce around 45 million metric tons of carbon emissions by helping users to work from home in the pandemic. The company believes that supporting remote work will also continue to assist with the climate crisis.

Update Your Workplace with Zapps

Zoom is adding new features and functionality to the workplace all the time. However, the company also knows how important it is to ensure that you have all the best-of-breed features you need from different tools in one place. That’s where Zapps can help. Zapps with Zoom ensure more best-of-breed functionality for your Zoom meeting workflow.

These convenient apps provide access to all of the tools you need to boost productivity and enhance work experiences. The first Zapps will be available within the Zoom solution by the end of the year, and there will be an open platform for developers available by 2021.

Currently, Zoom has around 25 launch partners building apps for things like:

Education: Kaltura, Kahoot!, and Coursera
Collaboration: Slack, Box, Asana, Atlassian, Dropbox, and Wrike
Productivity: Superhuman for email, Pitch presentations, Woven calendaring, Smartsheet, and Coda
Sales and marketing: Gong, Chorus, and Hubspot
Meetings: Cameo, Exer, and Slido for polls
Support: PagerDuty and ServiceNow
Whiteboarding: Lucidspark, Mural, and Miro

Zapps ensure that business users can have all the applications they need to be productive in one place. Zapps bring your critical applications into the Zoom experience, so you can use them throughout your meetings. For instance, with a Dropbox Zapp, you can share a document you’re working on with your team or access a poll with Slido. Zoom promises Zapps will enhance the entire business workflow.

Business leaders can search for and add approved Zapps directly to the Zoom account. You can then customise who will have access to Zapps. Developers will also be able to submit their own Zapps to Zoom for testing and approval going forward.

Updates to Zoom Rooms and Zoom for Home

2020 is a confusing time for many businesses. Around the world, companies are still in varying stages of addressing the COVID-19 pandemic. Going forward, few people believe that organisations will be able to just “return to normal”. No matter where you are in the re-opening process, Zoom Rooms and Zoom for Home are here to help.

Zoom’s range of hardware devices help companies to re-enter the office landscape in a way that’s safe and productive. The Virtual Receptionist solution with the new Zoom Rooms Kiosk mode allows customers to engage a receptionist virtually through Zoom. On the other hand, Zoom Rooms Scheduling Display options now come with people counting tools to ensure that you don’t go over the appropriate number of people in a meeting.

Zoom also introduced enhanced voice commands for Zoom Rooms as part of Zoomtopia. There’s native integration for Alexa for Business with Zoom Rooms now, so you can say “Alexa, join my meeting” to start a conversation. Admins can control advanced settings with the AWS console. If you prefer, you can also control meetings with your laptop or mobile device without having to touch a shared device, reducing the risk of germs spreading.

Zoom Rooms enhanced dashboard reporting will give admins more scope to monitor the security and safety of the environment with insights on air quality, temperature, and how many attendees are in a room. There’s also a remote controller system within the Zoom admin portal.

For Hybrid Workers and Home Employees

For the team members working in the new hybrid or remote landscape, Zoom offers the Zoom Rooms smart gallery, which creates a gallery view of all in-room participants, with help from AI to boost face-to-face communication. This feature is coming in 2021. There will also be new whiteboarding enhancements in 2021, with support across mobile, rooms, and desktop, with persistent whiteboard, templates, snapshots, and infinite canvas.

Zapps (the apps we mentioned above) are also going to be available with Zoom Rooms too, with support for features like Mural and Lucidspark already available. Zoom is even working closely with hardware partners to offer new enhanced solutions for hybrid and home displays. By 2021, Zoom predicts that Zoom for Home will have more options than ever. Right now, you can use Portal from Facebook, all Zoom Room appliances, and the DTEN ME. By the end of the year and into 2021, options will include:

DTEN onTV
Google Nest Hub
Amazon Echo Show
HP Collaboration G6 24/27
Yealink MeetingBar A20
Lenovo ThinkSmart View
Neat Frame
Neat Bar One
Portal TV from Facebook

Zoom is also expanding its current hardware certification program to include personal devices for home workspaces. These hardware types will include portable speakerphones that work through USB, like the Poly Sync 20. There’s also support for all-in-one desktop systems and webcams. The certification program ensures that these devices suit the needs of Zoom users.

The OnZoom Events Platform

Zoom has truly delivered an incredible range of updates with Zoomtopia, with new features and solutions for virtually every need. One of the upcoming solutions is OnZoom, a leading online events platform supporting creativity and innovation in the hybrid and virtual world.

Zoom created OnZoom in response to all the amazing innovations that appeared during the COVID-19 lockdowns. OnZoom aims to simplify the way that business owners, entrepreneurs, educators, and more bring content to customers and users.

As an extension of the existing Zoom UC platform, OnZoom helps paid users to create, monetise, and host events like concerts, fitness classes, improve shows, and musical performances. There’s event discovery and monetisation features, combined with industry-leading video for sensational virtual experiences. With OnZoom, users can:

Host and schedule one-time events, event series, and drop-ins
Support up to 1,000 attendees depending on Zoom license
Sell and list tickets for sale
Promote and share public events via social media and email
Reach new audiences in any location

Zoom users will also have access to their own OnZoom account where they can search the public events directory and purchase tickets or pay for events via PayPal and other major credit cards. You can also purchase and gift OnZoom tickets for family and friends, and natively donate to nonprofits too. There’s support to join an event, share and favourite events and so much more.

OnZoom has already connected with some amazing partners through this new platform. For instance, Beautiful Destinations, a source of insight into travel and lifestyle information, relies on OnZoom to support virtual travel to new destinations. The company can show its audience how incredible different places are through Zoom.

Life Rolls On, the adaptive surf and skating company for people with disabilities offers a phenomenal event experience through OnZoom too. The Founder and CEO, Jesse Billauer, said that the summer of 2020 meant that they could get to the skate parks and oceans like they used to. However, thanks to OnZoom, the unique community can still come together and make new friends and connections.

Even WW (previously WeightWatchers) began offering virtual workshops with Zoom when COVID-19 emerged. The company believes that OnZoom will take these experiences to the next level. As part of the OnZoom launch, WW is hosting a weekend with the head of Wellness and Nutrition in the company, Jaclyn London, for insights into building healthy habits.

The Latest UCaaS Updates with Zoom

Zoomtopia is Zoom’s most exciting event of the year for a good reason. 2020 brought us a slew of fantastic platform enhancements to look forward to, alongside the arrival of new features, updated capabilities, and even amazing hardware options to choose from.

Along with all the wonderful changes mentioned above, Zoom also introduced a selection of platform enhancements for 2020 on Zoom Meetings, Phone, and Webinars too.

Zoom Meetings

Zoom Meetings now comes with “immersive scenes” – a feature that allows the host to set custom background themes for meetings and create layouts where participant videos are embedded within a scene everyone can share. Other features include:

Meeting reactions and animations: Zoom now offers new animated reactions to make non-verbal communications more exciting. There’s even audio elements included
Video waiting rooms: Now hosts can see guest video when they’re in a waiting room. That means you can see who’s waiting to chat before you let them in, starting in 2021
Recording highlights: Using natural language processing and AI, Zoom cloud recording will pull key insights from your transcripts to help you see the most important parts
High-fidelity audio: High fidelity music mode is now available in addition to background noise suppression. Zoom is planning on using AI to turn this mode on automatically

Zoom Phone

Zoom announced new features to the E911 option for Zoom phone, to help provide peace of mind in the case of a potential emergency. If someone dials 911 on a Zoom phone, internal safety team members will know instantly. Designated internal safety team members also get an alert on Zoom chat. Safety teams can trigger Zoom Rooms digital signage too. Other features for Zoom Phone now rolling out include:

Zoom Phone Team SMS: Zoom is taking SMS texting to a whole new level with the Team SMS function. Members of call queues can transfer text responses between team members, which provides a better escalation path
AI spam detection and blocking: Reduce your risk of spam problems with Zoom AI solutions. You can set a threshold for intelligence-based identification of spam calls and help to filter out unwanted conversations
Support for more countries: Zoom phone will now be available with telephone numbers across 42 countries and territories. More locations are coming soon, including South Africa

Zoom Webinars

To make online events as engaging as possible, Zoom is giving webinar attendees the option to share reactions in real-time, with immediate feedback for the presenter. There’s support for customised lobbies with new branding functionality so you can deliver a more consistent branded experiences for customers from all backgrounds too. Other updates include:

Lower thirds: Zoom is offering a new clean and professional way to identify speakers in the webinar session with text and graphics overlaying video
Breakout rooms: Webinar breakout rooms will allow attendees to connect, network and discuss what they saw in the webinar within smaller interactive groups
Debrief room: This will be a secure environment for webinar panellists and host to connect after the webinar is over. Speakers can share notes, and ideas without having to schedule a second meeting

Zoom Keeps Getting Bigger and Better

This year’s Zoomtopia was just as exciting as ever, with tons of new features and functionalities to explore. From updated encryption offerings, to a new event marketplace and various amazing hardware updates, Zoom is serving the new workspace better than ever. You can check out the latest Zoom press releases and blogs to learn more about Zapps, security, and UCaaS features from Zoom.

Artificial Intelligence Call Recording Event User Experience Video Conferencing