Cynthia Lee, Senior Product Manager, Zoom Rooms, freshly wrote a blog post detailing some new Zoom Room features. The latest set of features to the platform – set to enhance the hybrid working experience – namely as employees start returning to the office. Commenting on that very idea, Lee noted that: 

“Our latest updates to our Zoom Rooms solution will help simplify remote and hybrid collaboration, enable touch-free conference room experiences, and expand in-room capabilities.”

We will touch more on the “how” a bit later, but Zoom just released a slew of useful Zoom Rooms features, so let us dive in to figure out what you can do with them. 

 

Smart Gallery (Public Beta)

One of the latest updates to Zoom Rooms includes a new public offering dubbed “Smart Gallery.” According to Lee, the feature will enable an equitable meeting experience for all; by sending multiple video streams from each Zoom Room, “vastly improving the display of in-room participants,” Lee wrote.  

Zoom Room’s new Smart Gallery feature is the first iteration of the functionality, which harnesses the power of artificial intelligence to take a single-camera view of multiple people in a Zoom Room. 

“The technology can send up to three unique video streams to better display the in-room participants to remote attendees.”

What’s more – Neat and Poly solutions already support the feature, with Logitech and DTEN D7 solutions becoming available later in 2021. Zoom plans to support additional platforms and video streams in later releases, she noted.  

 

Zoom Native Voice Commands (Public Beta)

Zoom also launched a new set of voice commands, a feature now supported on all Zoom Rooms platforms. Zoom Rooms participants can use voice commands like start a meeting, leave a meeting, check-in, etc., letting users enjoy a hands-free user experience and subsequently freeing up their hands to focus on more pressing tasks.  

Lee said that this should further empower organizations to provide a safe and effective hands-free meeting experience. To get started, Zoom Rooms users merely have to say “hello Zoom” to prompt the new voice commands, adding an element of a personal assistant to the Zoom Room experience. 

 

In-Meeting Chat within Zoom Rooms & Webinar Controls 

Available in Zoom Rooms – meeting participants who join from Zoom Rooms or Zoom for Home devices, can now respond to in-meeting chats using the room controller or touchscreen. Those joining from a Zoom Room, therefore, enjoy similar experiences to those on desktop or mobile devices. 

Zoom Room users can even enjoy more control over webinars, attendees, and panelists, enabling them to do things like lock the webinar, mute panelists, allow attendees to raise hands, and more, Lee noted in that same post. 

 

Unified Device Management & Conference Room Connector Updates

Looking to simplify the user experience and management of Zoom devices – Zoom compiled Zoom Phone management, Zoom Phone Appliances, Zoom Room devices, and Zoom Rooms Digital Signage into a new unified device management section. 

“Today’s users now have an easy way to view and manage all the devices and hardware in their deployment, from a single place.”

Also fresh to the Zoom Room experience – conference room spaces with CRC (Cyclic Redundancy Check) deployed can use Zoom Phones within conference spaces, a feature available in select regions only.

 

Network Device Interface

Grasping tight to a partnership with NewTek, Inc., Zoom Room’s novel NDI (Network Device Interface) lets users send Zoom audio and video streams from Zoom Rooms to other NDI devices. According to Lee, this allows for more flexible integrations into studio video production and custom-designed environments.

Stay tuned for the latest Zoom updates here on GetVoIP News. We plan to keep you up-to-date with everything the company’s got going on in our continued industry coverage.