Zoom Voice, New Zoom Meetings Experience, Conference Room Enhancements, and Integrations Now Generally Available

By MTS Staff Writer On Jan 24, 2019

Video Communications Platform Delivers on Zoomtopia Product Announcements

Zoom Video Communications, Inc. announced that it has delivered on key promises of its Zoomtopia 2018 product keynote with general availability of highly anticipated new features and functionalities across its unified video communications platform.

Zoom Voice

After extensive beta testing with dozens of companies, Zoom Voice is now generally available to Zoom customers. Zoom Voice is a cloud phone system available as an add-on to Zoom’s platform. Support for inbound and outbound calling through the public switched telephone network (PSTN) and seamlessly integrated telephony features enable customers to replace their existing PBX solution and consolidate all of their business communication and collaboration requirements into their favorite video platform. Zoom Voice is now generally available to US and Canadian customers with more than 50 employees. The service will roll out globally to all businesses and broader geographies over 2019.

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“Zoom Voice is the innovative, modern phone system of the future and exactly what we’ve all been waiting for. The number of exciting new features that keep rolling out is impressive. The unified app experience is easy for end users and we are excited to deploy it more broadly to our employees,” said Steven Mandelbaum, VP of business solutions at EAB.

Zoom Meetings

Zoom has refreshed the desktop user experience of its flagship Meetings service – the app is now even more modern, sleek, and frictionless. New features available for this service include:

New desktop experience and features – Zoom’s desktop app is now one window instead of two, with personal and group channels, starred messages and contacts, as well as customizable notifications and preferences
Virtual background without green screen – Zoom allows users to display any image as their background during a Zoom Meeting, creating a professional appearance and expressing their personality. Mac i7, iPhone 8, iPad Pro 5, iPad 9.7, and all later models for these devices no longer require a green screen to use this feature. Zoom will support virtual background without green screen for Windows by the end of Q2 2019. (Other desktop devices support virtual backgrounds with green screens)
1080p video – now available to all Zoom Business and Enterprise users with high-performance PCs
Audio signature – this security feature adds an ultrasonic watermark to audio streams to identify the source of any leaked audio

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Conference Rooms and Workspaces

Zoom’s conference room offerings include software-based solution Zoom Rooms, SIP/H.323 bridge Conference Room Connector, as well as extension products, Digital Signage and Scheduling Display. Available by the end of January 2019 for Zoom conference rooms and workspaces:

Zoom Rooms enhanced interoperability support – enable one-click to join with HD audio and video for third-party meeting invitations, with automatic SIP/H.323 URI parsing
Redesigned Zoom Rooms Administrator Portal – enhanced usability and new enterprise management functionalities, such as additional room alerts, remote management capabilities, and room type filter
Zoom Rooms for Touch – support for dual screens (one touch, one non-touch), multiple-page whiteboards, and blackboard (light and dark background options)
Usability enhancements – Zoom Rooms now features waiting room and webinar raise hand
1080p support for Zoom Rooms video and content sharing

App Marketplace

Zoom’s App Marketplace brings together integrations built by Zoom and third-party developers, making it easy for customers and developers to extend Zoom’s platform with new functionalities. Among the new integrations released are Zoom for Hubspot (native integration), LinkedIn Sales Navigator, and Theta Lake.

“We made big promises at Zoomtopia 2018, and I’m proud that our team has delivered on them with incredible new features and products that significantly enhance our unified video communications platform,” said Oded Gal, head of product management for Zoom. “Our goal is to create frictionless, end-to-end communications experiences for our customers. Adding cloud PBX, refreshing our desktop interface, developing new conference room functionalities, as well as releasing more integrations, all serve to do just that.”