Zoom, the world’s favourite video conferencing solution, is experiencing a whirlwind of change right now. Since the start of 2020, demand for Zoom has skyrocketed at an astronomical level, with new features appearing almost non-stop.
With the arrival of Zoomtopia in October, the team announced a host of amazing updates to its features, including everything from end-to-end encryption, to a new marketplace for immersive experiences. To help you stay ahead of the curve as Zoom accelerates into the future, we’ve put together this quick roundup of the latest changes.
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.
