Zoom has launched its AI-powered solution, Zoom Docs, to enhance worker productivity and collaboration.
Announced at Zoomtopia 2023, Zoom says the collaboration workspace is “purpose-built to address today’s hybrid working challenges”. Its features include document and wiki creation and seamless workflow and project management processes.
Zoom AI is also built natively, enabling users to populate documents with content from Zoom meetings that can facilitate or inform creativity. Zoom AI companion can generate content, plans and projects by extracting critical information from previous discussions across the company’s database.
Smita Hashim, Chief Product Officer at Zoom, said:
Hybrid work is hard enough, and the status quo for document creation and collaboration isn’t cutting it anymore. Zoom is helping our customers by bringing the definition of a ‘doc’ into 2023 — with powerful document authoring and collaboration capabilities, modern collaboration tools, and a next-gen workspace built from the ground up with AI at its heart; Zoom Docs is that solution.”
The setup is managed within Zoom’s platform, removing the need for app-switching between video conferencing and collaboration or project management platforms. The solution is modular and integrates with Zoom and third-party apps.
“With Zoom Docs, teams can work faster, all while minimising silos and being seamlessly integrated into the Zoom interface that users already know and love,” Hashim added.
Zoom Docs is expected to be generally available in 2024.
Zoom Docs’ Full Feature Set
One of Zoom Docs’ most significant selling points is its AI-powered functionality. Users can galvanise content creation by asking the AI Companion to help edit or change document tones or brainstorm potential ideas. The solution can summarise or query content so users can quickly catch up on the essential details. AI Companion also identifies and extracts relevant information across Zoom Meetings and Team Chat, simplifying how users can share data across Zoom.
Users can use “content blocks” to illustrate this pulled information in customisable layouts and workflows. Table blocks allow users to organise data, oversee projects, track tasks, and monitor schedules as represented by grouping, filters and columns.
Users can combine company knowledge via wikis and shared folders. Users can create wikis to link all pages and embed them in a visual tree, enabling colleagues to see how information is connected. Users can also group pages into hierarchies to manage documents with folders, allowing a more thorough source of knowledge.
Another key feature is that Zoom Docs is natively embedded into the Zoom platform and can be intuitively integrated with third-party apps for a more streamlined collaborative experience. This allows users to create, edit, and search Zoom Docs content within Meetings, Team Chat, and across the Zoom desktop, web, and mobile apps.
Zoom has said that a priority for the product was ease of use. Zoom Docs intends to cater to various user needs for a comprehensive yet accessible user experience for collaboration. Users can delegate tasks, get fast insights, and monitor project progress between meetings, allowing team members to focus on the tasks at hand. Colleagues can be mentioned to bring them into conversations, while comments and threads can be introduced to establish context.
Zoom Enhancing Its AI Portfolio This Autumn
Zoom launched its generative AI-powered digital assistant in September, which will be bundled into its paid-for subscriptions at no extra cost.
Zoom AI Companion will be accessible across the full Zoom platform in meetings, chat, phone, and email.
Features include meeting summarises, message drafting and real-time meeting feedback. Some features will be available at launch, while more will be introduced by Spring 2024. Users can interact with AI Companion through a side panel in the Meetings section. These capabilities will expand across Zoom next year.
What Other News Has Been Released at Zoomtopia 2023?
Zoom has launched healthcare and higher education summarization capabilities for its AI Companion solution.
Announced as part of Zoomtopia 2023, Zoom has expanded AI Companion’s summarization capabilities to new industry
customers in higher education and healthcare.
Zoom also announced a new collaboration feature for AI Companion, the idea generation tool Whiteboard, which is now generally available.
Users can now manage their AI Companion settings for Meetings, Team Chat, Whiteboard, and Mail all in one uniform space through the Zoom web portal.
