In a series of announcements, Zoom has introduced Zoom Workplace, its AI-powered collaboration platform, and new AI Companion expansions, reflecting the company’s broader shift into an AI-powered workplace platform.
The added capabilities promise to solve real customer problems by bringing the solutions into a single platform.
The biggest changes as part of the release include more streamlined communications with a new meetings tab to connect users’ workflows before, during and after meetings; improved engagement with new shared spaces for more focused collaboration; and optimized office experiences with Zoom Rooms, incorporating new Smart Name Tags and Smart Speaker Tags that can automatically apply name tags to people and highlight the different speakers in the room.
In addition, Zoom Workplace promises increased productivity with document collaboration which allows users to co-edit documents and share during the meeting experience.
While AI companion for phone currently lets users harness generative AI, Team Chat will also debut AI-powered sentence completion, suggested quick replies and smart scheduling, with new generative AI virtual backgrounds also being added to assist in creating custom backgrounds in meetings.
Smitha Hashim, chief product officer of Zoom, told ERP Today that “Zoom Workplace is really about connecting the entire platform” to meet “the needs that we hear about from our customers”.
Zoom Workplace and the platform UX enhancements that we announced represent a transformation for Zoom, bringing these together into a single AI-powered collaboration platform. Our goal is to help businesses reimagine teamwork, streamline communications, increase employee engagement, optimize in-person experiences and improve productivity.
Zoom is also announcing Ask AI Companion, an enhancement of the digital assistant, to help users prepare for their workday across Zoom Workplace, plus AI Companion for Zoom Phone and additional capabilities for Team Chat and Whiteboard.
In this way, users can receive critical information quickly, automate routine tasks and stay informed by synthesizing information from Zoom Meetings, Mail and Calendar, Team Chat, Notes and Docs.
All AI Companion features will continue to be included with the paid services in eligible Zoom user accounts.
AI Companion is also coming to Zoom Phone so users can harness generative AI to make their calls more productive. Some of the added features include a post-call summary and next steps, voicemail prioritization, voicemail task extraction and Team SMS thread summary.
When asked what are the most popular use cases for AI Companion, Mahesh Ram, head of AI products at Zoom, said: “I think the most popular ones so far have been meeting summarization, automatic capture of action items and next steps. These are very powerful not only for those people who are attending the meeting but for those who couldn’t make the meeting and need to catch up and stay abreast of what’s going on.
“I think the nice thing about these capabilities is that they fit right into the idea of distributed workforces and hybrid work because you can immediately get plugged into meeting content in a few minutes, even if you’re not able to be physically present at the meeting.”
