Zoom Video Communications Inc. is kicking off its annual Zoomtopia conference today with a host of generative artificial intelligence-based enhancements to its core platform as well as to the contact center offering it launched early last year and the Workvivo Ltd. employee engagement application it acquired last spring.

The highlight for most users is Zoom Docs (pictured), a modular workspace for documentation, project and data management that can also be used to create tables, wikis, tasks and other content. It’s integrated with Zoom conferencing to enable meeting organizers to create new documents and attach existing assets to meeting invitations as well as to collaborate during meetings. Users can populate documents with content from live meetings and chat sessions and also create new content using the Zoom AI Companion, the no-cost generative AI-based assistant it introduced last spring.

In a briefing with journalists, Zoom executives emphasized that Docs is more than just another word processor. “Zoom Docs is way more than note-taking,” said Theresa Larkin, product marketing manager for unified communications-as-a-service. “It’s focused on different use cases such as why you’re having a meeting and what you want to accomplish. You can use it as a project manager or a team repository.” Zoom said open interfaces will allow third-party products to be easily integrated.

AI enablement

AI Companion can work within Zoom Docs to edit or change writing tone, brainstorm ideas and summarize or query a document’s content. Modular content blocks can be used to create customizable layouts and workflows as well as to organize data and manage projects. Group members can add comments and threads, assign tasks and share content. Pages can be linked into a visual tree and grouped into hierarchies within folders. Availability is planned for 2024.

AI Companion is also getting a whiteboard capability that enables users to generate ideas in a shared space and organize them into categories. New highlights and smart chapter features have been added to make meeting summaries easier to review. Organizers can choose to receive an automated meeting summary based on the automatically generated transcriptions and the AI feature can also summarize long chat threads.

Zoom said future AI Companion enhancements will understand the context of questions and provide answers using content across the Zoom platform, including prior meeting transcripts, chats and data from selected third-party applications. Also planned is real-time feedback and coaching on presentation and conversational skills, auto-completion in chat sessions and automated scheduling support if the contents of a conversation indicate that a future meeting is needed.

Addressing a common concern with the large language models that underlie generative AI, Zoom said AI Companion isn’t trained with user data. “We believe AI needs to be federated, responsible and empowering,” said Randy Mestre, Zoom’s head of industry marketing. “We don’t use audio, video, chat or any other customer content to train our LLM. It’s turned off by default and users have full visibility into how the AI works.”

Tighter Workvivo integration

Workvivo users will soon be able to access the platform from within the Zoom desktop client. Workvivo’s workspace reservation component will get a wayfinding feature next year that shows a map of a reserved seat and the path to the location displayed on a mobile device for users in unfamiliar settings.

Huddles, a virtual workspace offering, will also get location information sometime in 2024 so users can know whether collaborators are in a virtual session or the physical office. Enhancements to Zoom Scheduler let users incorporate single-use booking links to better control their calendars, add customized booking page logos and check availability across multiple accounts such as work and personal calendars.

Planned future enhancements will let users incorporate unique availability schedules per host so users don’t have to block calendars for different teams or regions. They’ll also have the ability to delegate booking tasks and automatically link meeting records from Zoom Scheduler to Salesforce Inc.’s customer relationship management platform.

Users of Zoom Contact Center, the unified communications and services platform the company announced early last year, also getting some generative AI support with a planned feature that will provide call center representatives with knowledge base articles during a live engagement. Generative AI features that will be added to Zoom Events in the coming months will automatically compose email invitations and generate lobby chats with support for automatically generated sessions planned for next year. Both Zoom Virtual Agent and Zoom Contact Center will also integrate with Meta Platforms Inc.’s WhatsApp and Messenger digital messaging applications within a few months.

Image: Zoom