Zoom Docs is the exciting new solution to help the leading collaboration vendor compete against Microsoft and Google. Originally introduced during the 2023 Zoomtopia conference, Zoom Docs is now generally available, as of the 5th of August 2024.
The productivity tool will be included in all paid Zoom Workspace tiers at no extra cost for companies. According to Zoom, the solution gives companies a generative AI-first solution for collaboration, creativity, and productivity.
It infuses Zoom’s AI Companion – the AI app similar to Microsoft Copilot, into a versatile, modular platform for content creation. With it, companies can optimize team collaboration, create documents for a range of use cases, maximize meeting efficiency, and access real-time AI assistance.
The offering also connects seamlessly with Zoom’s other tools, allowing you to draw content from meetings or launch documents within video conferencing sessions.
What is Zoom Docs?
Zoom Docs is a collaboration-focused digital workspace, similar to Google Docs or Microsoft Word. At Zoomtopia 2023, Zoom said the tool was “purpose-built” to address the challenges companies face with hybrid work. Unlike traditional word processors, however, Zoom Docs is an AI-first, dynamic environment, optimized for team work.
With Zoom Docs, teams can do so much more than just “create documents”. The AI-powered platform allows you to build wikis, design workflows, collaborate in real-time, and surface information from multiple locations. It’s a modular, easy-to-use tool that integrates with both the wider features of Zoom Workplace, and third-party tools.
With AI Companion at its core, Zoom Docs allows users to consistently collaborate with a generative AI tool that can edit or create content, change the tone of writing, produce brainstorms, and summarize messages. Plus, AI Companion can pull information from your Zoom meetings and chat sessions into your Docs, streamlining how you share information in Zoom.
According to Zoom, the ability of “Docs” to collect and combine information in a single environment will deliver huge benefits to companies. After all, teams spend nearly an hour every day just looking for information spread across different tools and apps.
What Can Teams Do with Zoom Docs?
On a broad level, Zoom Docs is the Zoom version of an AI-powered workspace, such as Google Docs with Google Gemini. It’s natively integrated into Zoom Workplace, and offers a modular experience, so users can create documents that meet their specific needs.
Additionally, like most “Doc” style tools companies use today, Docs won’t just support text. It will also allow users to create tables and charts and add other forms of media into the mix, such as videos and images. The most impressive feature of Zoom Docs is the AI Companion system at its core.
This basically means companies can use generative AI to compose, convert, edit, and summarize content in seconds. There’s even the option to translate content into 9 different languages.
Here are some of the key things users can do with Zoom Docs.
Create a Range of Zoom Docs for Different Use Cases
According to Zoom, Docs will be able to solve a variety of challenges for modern workforces, reducing the time they spend on repetitive tasks, like searching for information and creating content. Companies can leverage the AI-first capabilities of Zoom Docs to:
- Generate content: You can use AI Companion to generate content based on pre-existing documents, meeting transcripts, or using custom or pre-set commands. The app can also edit and convert documents into different formats and tones.
- Revise and improve content: AI Companion in Zoom Docs can summarize articles, create plans and outlines, catch spelling and grammatical errors, translate content into 9 languages, and change the tone and style of your documents.
- Leverage content blocks: The content blocks included in Zoom Docs support text, tables, images, charts, and more, allowing users to simplify information management. You can add data tables to docs, checklists, videos, and callouts to make the doc more engaging.
- Embed content from different environments: Users can embed all kinds of content into their Zoom Docs, including pages from Zoom Whiteboard, Google Drive, YouTube, X, Figma, and more.
- Create information hubs and Wikis: Zoom Docs allows users to create wikis that link various pages in a visual tree. You can also group pages into hierarchies and organize docs with folders. Plus, since you can pull information from Zoom apps and third-party tools, you can streamline knowledge sharing throughout your entire organization.
Improve Planning and Productivity
Zoom says Docs will help companies more effectively manage teams, and empower staff members to accomplish more in a unified workplace. Zoom Docs makes it easy to plan complex projects with templates for briefs covering a range of use cases, from events, to product launches.
You can also star frequently used docs, filter docs by author for quick access, and create a shareable, editable doc for any user to access in your organization.
Other productivity-boosting features include:
- Progress tracking: Users can monitor progress throughout a project with tables, trackers, and checklists. There are options for setting due dates, status tracking solutions, and various views to choose from, such as galleries, calendars, and Kanban boards.
- Organize data: Companies can organize team documents in dedicated Wikis, allowing users to access a centralized location for shared information. You can group, filter, sort, and even convert data into tables, too.
- Real-time collaboration: Up to 100 users can edit and contribute to a Zoom Doc at the same time. You can @mention colleagues within docs, and use AI Companion to create brainstorms in seconds.
Enhance Meetings and Collaboration
Meetings are obviously a core component of Zoom Workplace, and the Zoom Docs experience takes meetings in Zoom to the next level, helping users to connect and share information before, during and after meetings. Before a meeting, Zoom AI Companion can pull content from meetings into meaningful documents, and agendas.
During a meeting, users can access AI companion meeting summaries, converted into easily editable docs, to reduce the time spent on note-taking and copying notes into shared documents. There are even Doc templates available for Q&As, one-on-ones and other types of meeting.
Zoom Docs users can also:
- Start and schedule meetings within a Zoom Doc: Users can immediately launch a meeting from a Zoom Doc, and immediately share permission to edit that doc with all attendees. You can also provide temporary access to guests, for just the duration of a meeting.
- Co-create during meetings: During a meeting, team members can co-edit, comment, and add content to a doc in real-time, without leaving the conference window. Attendees using mobile devices can also view in-meeting doc data without signing in.
- Share Docs across the workplace: Once you’ve created your meeting doc, you can share it with team members across Zoom Team Chat or Mail, and invite colleagues from outside your organization to contribute and collaborate too.
How to Get Started with Zoom Docs
Zoom Docs is free to access on all Zoom Workplace plans, however, since its functionality relies heavily on access to AI Companion, you’ll need to enable that feature first. Admins need to enable the correct settings for AI Companion to function in Zoom Docs. This means allowing the AI assistant, and team members to use meeting summaries and meeting transcripts.
You can find the step-by-step guide to enabling AI Companion for Docs here.
