Zoom launched over 400 features in 2020 to serve users better

Zoom Video Communications has released more than 400 features and announced several new offerings in 2020 to better serve users’ communication needs to get business done, continue learning when schools were closed, seek care via telehealth, get married, or stay in touch with family and friends.

Some of these highlights include:

• Zoom Apps was announced, which will bring best-of-breed apps directly into the Zoom experience for use before, during, and after your meetings to enable seamless collaboration and meeting management, and improve engagement

• Zoom for Home, allowing remote workers to outfit their home workspaces with devices that enable seamless communication and collaboration on Zoom

• OnZoom, a virtual events marketplace built to host, discover & attend immersive online experiences

• Zoom 5.0, with 256-bit AES-GCM encryption for all meetings and other advanced security enhancements and host controls

• End-to-end encryption, which gives users the ability to host meetings where nobody except each participant – not even Zoom’s servers – has access to the encryption keys being used to encrypt the meeting

Those last two points were core to another high-priority focus area for Zoom: security. As global usage rapidly increased, Zoom devoted all engineering resources to increasing security for all users. The product and engineering teams focused on security enhancements like adding the Security icon for comprehensive in-meeting controls, the “Report a User” function, and more granular data routing options.

A few other notable updates Zoom has made to their portfolio of products:

Zoom Meetings

Zoom has added many new features and additional functionality to their core video communications solution to help users communicate and collaborate seamlessly over video during these trying times. Some of the most prominent features include spotlighting and multi-pinning video feeds, co-host capabilities for managing Breakout Rooms, the ability to use slides as a virtual background, High-Fidelity Music Mode, and Filters, which give users the freedom to create a more user-friendly, engaging meeting experience. In-meeting security controls, a new security settings section, and centralized controls allow secure meetings at scale.

These features have enabled new ways of meeting and communicating in the classroom, across the enterprise, in healthcare settings, and more. Educators are creating more immersive virtual learning experiences and enhancing the quality of their music lessons, while companies like Capital One relied on Zoom to quickly transition to a new way of working from home.

Zoom Rooms

Workspaces took on all shapes and sizes as the world pivoted to remote and hybrid work and learning. In addition to Zoom for Home offerings and device expansion, Zoom introduced our Hardware as a Service program and added more capabilities to engage, including the ability to see 49 video participants in Gallery View and assign Zoom Rooms to Breakout Rooms.

Zoom also announced a number of cool new features to make it easier to return to the office:

Zoom Video Webinars

The webinar platform became an essential tool for event organizers that had to move their in-person events online in 2020, enabling them to manage large audiences more effectively. Zoom has added Gallery View, native post-webinar surveys, enhanced scheduling options, and a number of Q&A features to improve engagement with attendees. Many of these new features have been instrumental for organizations that used Zoom Video Webinars for virtual events large and small — from the NBA and WNBA to Zoom’s own Zoomtopia user conference.

Zoom Chat

Zoom Chat is free with a Zoom Meetings license and streamlines workspace collaboration by allowing users to instantly message groups or individuals inside and even outside their organization. Zoom added a ton of useful features to our Zoom Chat solution to drive fast and effective communication, including the ability to record a voice message on desktop, pin important messages, and share files from different sources, like SharePoint. They’ve also made things easier for administrators with centralized channel management, external participant controls, and removing contacts permanently — all from the admin portal.

Zoom App Marketplace

The Zoom App Marketplace, the leading source for discovering best-of-breed apps that enable seamless collaboration with Zoom, surpassed 1,000 apps and bots. It provides integrations for popular applications spanning scheduling, chat, marketing ops, project management, CRM, sales analytics & support, customer service, education, finance, healthcare, and other use cases.

Zoom Video SDK

The new video software development kit (SDK) allows developers to build powerful desktop and mobile applications with fully customizable user interfaces on top of the Zoom platform. With access to raw video and audio data plus other in-demand interactive Zoom features, developers can create incredible experiences for a variety of use cases including peer-to-peer chat applications, or create custom real-time video applications for retail or gaming with live streaming and screen sharing functionality.

Additional enhancements & news

Zoom has made a number of upgrades across our entire platform to enhance functionality and improve reliability, including increasing the number of co-located data centers globally to 19 and releasing an enhanced Business Associate Agreement (BAA) for our customers with a Zoom for Healthcare license.

Zoom for Government, a FedRAMP authorized platform, helped many federal, state, and local agencies, federal systems integrators, and contractors support continuity of operations and mission-effectiveness during the pandemic, as well as positioned them for their current and future IT modernization journey.

Source: CRN