Zoom Video Communications has unveiled a range of planned enhancements for its videoconferencing platform at its annual user conference Zoomtopia. New features include whiteboarding and customer engagement options, live translation of video conferences, enhanced encryption and a partnership with Oculus on its VR project Horizon Rooms.
Real-time, automated translation is expected to be available before year-end on Zoom. In addition, the company will expand its live transcription with support for multiple languages.
The new Video Engagement Center will give organisations a way to bring together employees and customers, allowing staff to share their expertise "in a structured and immersive virtual environment". The new Zoom Whiteboard targets improved collaboration among staff, with the ability to interact with the whiteboard similar to an in-person experience. This should create more visually engaging and efficient meeting experiences, the company said.
The Whiteboard will be one of the first features, along with Zoom Meetings, coming to Oculus's Horizon Workrooms. These are virtual meeting rooms bringing together people in different locations using VR headsets. The Zoom experience should be available in Horizon should ship later this year.
Other updates include individual video feeds in Zoom Rooms for on-site participants in a video meeting, putting them on equal footing with remote employees. Zoom also will add its own hotdesking tool, to help employees returning to the office book desk space and access their Zoom profile from anywhere.
In addition, the company underlined its pledge to improve security and privacy on the Zoom platform. Encryption options will expand with a Bring Your Own Key (BYOK) offering planned for a beta trial later this year and end-to-end encryption for the Zoom Phone service, which may also start by year-end.
Zoom said the aim is to create a secure, unified communications platform, bringing together its video meetings, chat, webinars and phone services. Zoom Apps will be expanded across the platform with integration across all services, making it easier to access data and documents and collaborate also with third-party software. A Zoom Widget also is planned to help users manage their time in meetings and notify co-workers of their schedule.
