Latest news with #ZoomAICompanion
Channel Post MEA
4 days ago
- Business
- Channel Post MEA
Zoom Rolls Out New Agentic AI Offerings
Zoom Communications has delivered new agentic AI capabilities to help users complete tasks across platforms and save time during the work day. With the Custom AI Companion add-on, Zoom AI Companion can now connect to 16 third-party apps to help orchestrate tasks without leaving Zoom. Additionally, the Custom AI Companion add-on is now available for online purchase, enabling small business owners to leverage AI Companion across third-party video conferencing platforms like Google Meet and others, customize meeting summary templates, create custom avatars, and connect third-party apps to boost productivity and help them get more done so they can focus on building and growing their business. 'With Zoom AI Companion's agentic skills, users will see a significant productivity boost to help them get more done — not just in Zoom, but across business-essential apps like ServiceNow, Jira, Asana, Box, and more,' said Smita Hashim, chief product officer at Zoom. 'The Custom AI Companion add-on empowers users to streamline their workflows by having AI Companion join their Zoom Meetings and in-person meetings, and can now access AI Companion across other video conferencing platforms.' New connected third-party apps for Custom AI Companion add-on AI Companion uses agentic AI capabilities to maximize efficiency, helping users save time and get more done without leaving Zoom Workplace. With the Custom AI Companion add-on, users can already connect to apps like Amazon Q, Glean, and Jira to deliver powerful indexing, enterprise search, and ticketing capabilities. New third-party apps also deliver context-rich answers and help complete tasks across workstreams with intelligent app orchestration. Improve sales and service outcomes: Accelerate decisions and improve customer satisfaction by empowering teams to resolve service tickets, track opportunities, and update records in real-time, directly from Zoom. When connected to ServiceNow , Zendesk , and other applications, AI Companion helps organizations streamline workflows, reduce manual effort, and ensure customer interactions drive meaningful business results. Accelerate decisions and improve customer satisfaction by empowering teams to resolve service tickets, track opportunities, and update records in real-time, directly from Zoom. When connected to , , and other applications, AI Companion helps organizations streamline workflows, reduce manual effort, and ensure customer interactions drive meaningful business results. Reimagine document collaboration: When connected to Microsoft OneDrive , Google Drive , Box* , Confluence , Notion , or Coda , AI Companion helps drive meaningful conversations with secure access to existing documents during meetings, and the ability to generate new documents based on current meetings, update existing documents with simple prompts, or get a quick summary of a document. * Not all document features available at launch. When connected to , , , , , or , AI Companion helps drive meaningful conversations with secure access to existing documents during meetings, and the ability to generate new documents based on current meetings, update existing documents with simple prompts, or get a quick summary of a document. * Simplify project management: Keeping teams updated on projects and activities can be challenging, but when connected to Asana and Jira , users can query and command project tools, using AI Companion to update project statuses, assign tasks, and set deadlines without app-juggling or manual workflows. Keeping teams updated on projects and activities can be challenging, but when connected to and , users can query and command project tools, using AI Companion to update project statuses, assign tasks, and set deadlines without app-juggling or manual workflows. Reduce communication silos: Keep chats and ideas organized in third-parting messaging apps with the ability to search, summarize, and post messages from AI Companion. Keep chats and ideas organized in third-parting messaging apps with the ability to search, summarize, and post messages from AI Companion. Recruit and onboard new talent: When connected to Workday, AI Companion can help expedite recruiting, interviews, and onboarding workflows with search and summary capabilities about open jobs and candidate profiles. Custom AI Companion add-on expands to online customers Many entrepreneurs, solopreneurs, small business owners, and consultants often find themselves switching meeting platforms throughout their day to take calls with clients and stakeholders, without a central way to organize their meeting notes. The Custom AI Companion add-on, now available for purchase online, expands AI Companion's meeting summary capabilities to third-party video conferencing platforms such as Google Meet and others, with Cisco Webex coming soon, and delivers agentic AI capabilities to help small businesses get more done: Professional service providers like consultants and freelancers can simplify workflows and save time beyond Zoom Meetings, Zoom Phone calls, and in-person meetings by using AI-generated meeting summaries across third-party meeting platforms like Google Meet and others. With connections to third-party applications like Asana, they can automatically have projects updated in Asana without leaving the meeting. like consultants and freelancers can simplify workflows and save time beyond Zoom Meetings, Zoom Phone calls, and in-person meetings by using AI-generated meeting summaries across third-party meeting platforms like Google Meet and others. With connections to third-party applications like Asana, they can automatically have projects updated in Asana without leaving the meeting. Sales professionals can nurture relationships with prospects and clients while reducing admin time by automatically updating sales records in CRMs based on the conversation. can nurture relationships with prospects and clients while reducing admin time by automatically updating sales records in CRMs based on the conversation. Educators can go beyond meeting summaries and lecture plans to reliably generate summaries and takeaways with custom summaries that can be shared with students to reinforce learning and create personalized videos using Custom Avatars for Zoom Clips to connect with students in different languages. With the Custom AI Companion add-on, small businesses can connect AI Companion to these 16 apps, plus tailor AI Companion skills to address their unique needs and drive efficiency across their organizations: Work across platforms: Zoom is an open platform, and AI Companion can attend third-party meetings, including Microsoft Teams and Google Meet, with Cisco Webex support coming soon. AI Companion can join meetings on a user's behalf to automatically transcribe, summarize, and deliver actionable follow-ups. Zoom is an open platform, and AI Companion can attend third-party meetings, including Microsoft Teams and Google Meet, with Cisco Webex support coming soon. AI Companion can join meetings on a user's behalf to automatically transcribe, summarize, and deliver actionable follow-ups. Save time with AI-generated clips : With Custom Avatars for Zoom Clips, users can create an avatar in their likeness, provide a transcript of the desired content, and allow AI Companion to generate a clip for them, saving time and helping them scale their efforts. : With Custom Avatars for Zoom Clips, users can create an avatar in their likeness, provide a transcript of the desired content, and allow AI Companion to generate a clip for them, saving time and helping them scale their efforts. Customize meeting summaries with templates: Users can turn meetings into tailored, actionable summaries by selecting from 11 purpose-built templates designed to reflect the tone, structure, and focus of each meeting and match the meeting goals. Users can turn meetings into tailored, actionable summaries by selecting from 11 purpose-built templates designed to reflect the tone, structure, and focus of each meeting and match the meeting goals. Expand knowledge: Admins can connect Google Drive and other external drive accounts as data sources in AI Studio while respecting existing permission controls, and crawl public URLs as a data source for knowledge collections so AI Companion can provide more relevant answers to users' queries. The Custom AI Companion add-on is now available for purchase online for $12 per user per month with paid Zoom Workplace plans. Maximize the workday with AI Companion Zoom AI Companion continues to enhance productivity and collaboration across Zoom Workplace. These new capabilities are included at no extra charge as part of Zoom AI Companion for all paid Zoom Workplace licenses. Get started faster: The new onboarding experience within the Zoom desktop app makes it easier to configure AI Companion settings, including what meetings are summarized, who summaries are shared with, and how they are shared. The new onboarding experience within the Zoom desktop app makes it easier to configure AI Companion settings, including what meetings are summarized, who summaries are shared with, and how they are shared. Build better meeting agendas: Users can easily add structure to meetings by creating agendas for upcoming meetings from templates. AI Companion can also leverage previous meetings or Zoom Docs to create even more tailored agendas. Users can easily add structure to meetings by creating agendas for upcoming meetings from templates. AI Companion can also leverage previous meetings or Zoom Docs to create even more tailored agendas. Get more out of calls: Users can now query AI Companion before, during, and after Zoom Phone calls to help them catch up and gain deeper insights. They can ask questions like, 'What was the disagreement about?' or 'Can you tell me the main points being discussed?' Users can also have AI Companion pull up information from previous conversations, prioritize missed calls, and draft follow-up messages. Users can now query AI Companion before, during, and after Zoom Phone calls to help them catch up and gain deeper insights. They can ask questions like, 'What was the disagreement about?' or 'Can you tell me the main points being discussed?' Users can also have AI Companion pull up information from previous conversations, prioritize missed calls, and draft follow-up messages. Summarize documents in chat threads: AI Companion can summarize supported text-based documents shared in Zoom Team Chat to help quickly and efficiently digest new information without leaving the chat thread. AI Companion can summarize supported text-based documents shared in Zoom Team Chat to help quickly and efficiently digest new information without leaving the chat thread. Capture notes and tasks for in-person interactions: AI Companion also supports in-person meetings with the Voice Recorder, transcribing, summarizing, and capturing action items, allowing users to focus on the conversation and revisit details and action items later. AI Companion also supports in-person meetings with the Voice Recorder, transcribing, summarizing, and capturing action items, allowing users to focus on the conversation and revisit details and action items later. Easily access meeting assets: Users can access meeting summaries, transcripts, recordings, and event details from the meeting card in the calendar event and via email. Hosts will also be able to share the assets with participants via the meeting card in Zoom Calendar (coming later this month), and participants can request access to the meeting card via the Zoom Calendar event. Users can access meeting summaries, transcripts, recordings, and event details from the meeting card in the calendar event and via email. Hosts will also be able to share the assets with participants via the meeting card in Zoom Calendar (coming later this month), and participants can request access to the meeting card via the Zoom Calendar event. Seamless sharing: AI Companion can be configured to automatically share meeting summaries to third-party platforms, like Microsoft Teams (coming soon) and others, to update counterparts and refresh customer records with the latest conversation highlights. Zoom Workplace powers collaboration and productivity Zoom Workplace continues to accelerate collaboration and help users ideate, create, and deliver effective work effortlessly on a single app. Track edits and publish externally in Zoom Docs: Easily track content changes to docs, highlighting content additions, deletions, replacements, and formatting with specific styles. Users can also now publish Zoom Docs as public webpages, accessible to anyone, whether they are logged in or not. Easily track content changes to docs, highlighting content additions, deletions, replacements, and formatting with specific styles. Users can also now publish Zoom Docs as public webpages, accessible to anyone, whether they are logged in or not. Stitch, combine, and create longer clips: Merge multiple Zoom Clips into one seamless video without external apps, preview and make adjustments before finalizing edits, and preserve original content without overwriting original assets.
Hans India
5 days ago
- Business
- Hans India
Zoom rolls out new agentic AI offerings to save time and drive connections
'With Zoom AI Companion's agentic skills, users will see a significant productivity boost to help them get more done — not just in Zoom, but across business-essential apps like ServiceNow, Jira, Asana, Box, and more,' said Smita Hashim, chief product officer at Zoom. 'The Custom AI Companion add-on empowers users to streamline their workflows by having AI Companion join their Zoom Meetings and in-person meetings, and can now access AI Companion across other video conferencing platforms.' Zoom Communications, Inc. (NASDAQ: ZM) today delivered new agentic AI capabilities to help users complete tasks across platforms and save time during the work day. With the Custom AI Companion add-on, Zoom AI Companion can now connect to 16 third-party apps to help orchestrate tasks without leaving Zoom. Additionally, the Custom AI Companion add-on is now available for online purchase, enabling small business owners to leverage AI Companion across third-party video conferencing platforms like Google Meet and others, customize meeting summary templates, create custom avatars, and connect third-party apps to boost productivity and help them get more done so they can focus on building and growing their business. With the Custom AI Companion add-on, users can now connect to 16 third-party apps. Visi t the Zoom website to learn more about how app integrations with the Custom AI Companion add-on can boost efficiency. AI Companion uses agentic AI capabilities to maximize efficiency, helping users save time and get more done without leaving Zoom Workplace. With the Custom AI Companion add-on, users can already connect to apps like, andto deliver powerful indexing, enterprise search, and ticketing capabilities. New third-party apps also deliver context-rich answers and help complete tasks across workstreams with intelligent app orchestration. Many entrepreneurs, solopreneurs, small business owners, and consultants often find themselves switching meeting platforms throughout their day to take calls with clients and stakeholders, without a central way to organize their meeting notes. The Custom AI Companion add-on, now available for purchase online, expands AI Companion's meeting summary capabilities to third-party video conferencing platforms such as Google Meet and others, with Cisco Webex coming soon, and delivers agentic AI capabilities to help small businesses get more done: Professional service providers like consultants and freelancers can simplify workflows and save time beyond Zoom Meetings, Zoom Phone calls, and in-person meetings by using AI-generated meeting summaries across third-party meeting platforms like Google Meet and others. With connections to third-party applications like Asana, they can automatically have projects updated in Asana without leaving the meeting. like consultants and freelancers can simplify workflows and save time beyond Zoom Meetings, Zoom Phone calls, and in-person meetings by using AI-generated meeting summaries across third-party meeting platforms like Google Meet and others. With connections to third-party applications like Asana, they can automatically have projects updated in Asana without leaving the meeting. Sales professionals can nurture relationships with prospects and clients while reducing admin time by automatically updating sales records in CRMs based on the conversation. can nurture relationships with prospects and clients while reducing admin time by automatically updating sales records in CRMs based on the conversation. Educators can go beyond meeting summaries and lecture plans to reliably generate summaries and takeaways with custom summaries that can be shared with students to reinforce learning and create personalized videos using Custom Avatars for Zoom Clips to connect with students in different languages. With the Custom AI Companion add-on, small businesses can connect AI Companion to these 16 apps, plus tailor AI Companion skills to address their unique needs and drive efficiency across their organizations: Work across platforms: Zoom is an open platform, and AI Companion can attend third-party meetings, including Microsoft Teams and Google Meet, with Cisco Webex support coming soon. AI Companion can join meetings on a user's behalf to automatically transcribe, summarize, and deliver actionable follow-ups. Zoom is an open platform, and AI Companion can attend third-party meetings, including Microsoft Teams and Google Meet, with Cisco Webex support coming soon. AI Companion can join meetings on a user's behalf to automatically transcribe, summarize, and deliver actionable follow-ups. Save time with AI-generated clips : With Custom Avatars for Zoom Clips, users can create an avatar in their likeness, provide a transcript of the desired content, and allow AI Companion to generate a clip for them, saving time and helping them scale their efforts. : With Custom Avatars for Zoom Clips, users can create an avatar in their likeness, provide a transcript of the desired content, and allow AI Companion to generate a clip for them, saving time and helping them scale their efforts. Customize meeting summaries with templates: Users can turn meetings into tailored, actionable summaries by selecting from 11 purpose-built templates designed to reflect the tone, structure, and focus of each meeting and match the meeting goals. Users can turn meetings into tailored, actionable summaries by selecting from 11 purpose-built templates designed to reflect the tone, structure, and focus of each meeting and match the meeting goals. Expand knowledge: Admins can connect Google Drive and other external drive accounts as data sources in AI Studio while respecting existing permission controls, and crawl public URLs as a data source for knowledge collections so AI Companion can provide more relevant answers to users' queries. The Custom AI Companion add-on is now available for purchase online for $12 per user per month with paid Zoom Workplace plans. To learn more about how organizations can tailor AI Companion to meet their unique needs with the Custom AI Companion add-on, visit the Zoom website. Maximize the workday with AI Companion Zoom AI Companion continues to enhance productivity and collaboration across Zoom Workplace. These new capabilities are included at no extra charge as part of Zoom AI Companion for all paid Zoom Workplace licenses. Get started faster: The new onboarding experience within the Zoom desktop app makes it easier to configure AI Companion settings, including what meetings are summarized, who summaries are shared with, and how they are shared. The new onboarding experience within the Zoom desktop app makes it easier to configure AI Companion settings, including what meetings are summarized, who summaries are shared with, and how they are shared. Build better meeting agendas: Users can easily add structure to meetings by creating agendas for upcoming meetings from templates. AI Companion can also leverage previous meetings or Zoom Docs to create even more tailored agendas. Users can easily add structure to meetings by creating agendas for upcoming meetings from templates. AI Companion can also leverage previous meetings or Zoom Docs to create even more tailored agendas. Get more out of calls: Users can now query AI Companion before, during, and after Zoom Phone calls to help them catch up and gain deeper insights. They can ask questions like, 'What was the disagreement about?' or 'Can you tell me the main points being discussed?' Users can also have AI Companion pull up information from previous conversations, prioritize missed calls, and draft follow-up messages. Users can now query AI Companion before, during, and after Zoom Phone calls to help them catch up and gain deeper insights. They can ask questions like, 'What was the disagreement about?' or 'Can you tell me the main points being discussed?' Users can also have AI Companion pull up information from previous conversations, prioritize missed calls, and draft follow-up messages. Summarize documents in chat threads: AI Companion can summarize supported text-based documents shared in Zoom Team Chat to help quickly and efficiently digest new information without leaving the chat thread. AI Companion can summarize supported text-based documents shared in Zoom Team Chat to help quickly and efficiently digest new information without leaving the chat thread. Capture notes and tasks for in-person interactions: AI Companion also supports in-person meetings with the Voice Recorder, transcribing, summarizing, and capturing action items, allowing users to focus on the conversation and revisit details and action items later. AI Companion also supports in-person meetings with the Voice Recorder, transcribing, summarizing, and capturing action items, allowing users to focus on the conversation and revisit details and action items later. Easily access meeting assets: Users can access meeting summaries, transcripts, recordings, and event details from the meeting card in the calendar event and via email. Hosts will also be able to share the assets with participants via the meeting card in Zoom Calendar (coming later this month), and participants can request access to the meeting card via the Zoom Calendar event. Users can access meeting summaries, transcripts, recordings, and event details from the meeting card in the calendar event and via email. Hosts will also be able to share the assets with participants via the meeting card in Zoom Calendar (coming later this month), and participants can request access to the meeting card via the Zoom Calendar event. Seamless sharing: AI Companion can be configured to automatically share meeting summaries to third-party platforms, like Microsoft Teams (coming soon) and others, to update counterparts and refresh customer records with the latest conversation highlights. Zoom Workplace powers collaboration and productivity Zoom Workplace continues to accelerate collaboration and help users ideate, create, and deliver effective work effortlessly on a single app. Track edits and publish externally in Zoom Docs: Easily track content changes to docs, highlighting content additions, deletions, replacements, and formatting with specific styles. Users can also now publish Zoom Docs as public webpages, accessible to anyone, whether they are logged in or not. Easily track content changes to docs, highlighting content additions, deletions, replacements, and formatting with specific styles. Users can also now publish Zoom Docs as public webpages, accessible to anyone, whether they are logged in or not. Stitch, combine, and create longer clips: Merge multiple Zoom Clips into one seamless video without external apps, preview and make adjustments before finalizing edits, and preserve original content without overwriting original assets. To learn more about Zoom Workplace, visit the Zoom website.
Techday NZ
5 days ago
- Business
- Techday NZ
Zoom AI Companion expands integrations & features for productivity
Zoom has introduced new features to its AI Companion, notably expanding its integration capabilities to work with 16 third-party applications and adding further enhancements to its artificial intelligence offering. The company stated that these updates are designed to support users by increasing productivity, automating workflows, improving efficiency, and enhancing output across an expanding portfolio of supported applications and services. Additional integrations The Custom AI Companion add-on now enables Zoom AI Companion to connect with 16 external applications. Among these are ServiceNow, Jira, Asana, Box, Amazon Q, Glean, Microsoft OneDrive, Google Drive, Confluence, Notion, and Coda. These integrations mean that users can execute tasks such as resolving service tickets, updating project statuses, generating and summarising documents, and maintaining customer records directly from within Zoom's platform. AI Companion leverages agentic AI capabilities for what the company describes as maximising efficiency, allowing tasks to be completed without the need to constantly switch between applications. For example, teams are able to handle sales and service activities via ServiceNow and Zendesk, while collaboration on documentation is supported through integrations with Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive, and others. Project management is further facilitated by connections to platforms like Asana and Jira, enabling users to update statuses, assign tasks, and adjust deadlines using AI-powered commands from within their meeting or workflow environment. "With Zoom AI Companion's agentic skills, users will see a significant productivity boost to help them get more done - not just in Zoom, but across business-essential apps like ServiceNow, Jira, Asana, Box, and more," said Smita Hashim, Chief Product Officer at Zoom. "The Custom AI Companion add-on empowers users to streamline their workflows by having AI Companion join their Zoom Meetings and in-person meetings, and can now access AI Companion across other video conferencing platforms." Other notable integrations include messaging platforms, where AI Companion is capable of searching, summarising, and posting to third-party chat applications, as well as connections to recruitment tools like Workday to aid in organising and accelerating hiring workflows. Expanded accessibility The Custom AI Companion add-on is now available for online purchase, and can be used by small businesses, entrepreneurs, and consultants. This move expands the AI Companion's meeting summary features to other video conferencing platforms, such as Google Meet and, soon, Cisco Webex. This function provides meeting notes and summaries even when users move between different conferencing tools during their workday. For consultants and freelancers, the integration with project management apps enables automatic project updates in Asana directly from meetings. Sales professionals can benefit by having CRM records updated based on their conversations, reducing administrative tasks. In education, the AI Companion's custom summaries and ability to generate personalised video clips using custom avatars can facilitate communication with students in multiple languages and formats. The add-on offers other tailored functions such as the option to have AI Companion attend third-party meetings to transcribe, summarise, and deliver follow-up actions. Users can also create custom avatars for video content creation, customise meeting summaries with up to 11 different templates, and enhance the scope of knowledge the AI can draw from by linking various data sources. The Custom AI Companion add-on is priced at $12 per user per month for Zoom Workplace clients with paid licences. Core feature enhancements Zoom has introduced further enhancements to the underlying AI Companion. These include a revised onboarding experience within the desktop application, making it easier to configure which meetings are summarised and how these summaries are distributed. AI Companion can now help users develop meeting agendas by drawing on templates or past meetings. The ability to query the AI before, during, and after Zoom Phone calls adds another element, enabling users to catch up on missed points or retrieve insights from earlier discussions. Text-based documents shared via Zoom Team Chat can be summarised by AI Companion, helping users quickly process shared information. For in-person meetings, a new voice recorder feature offers transcription, summary, and action item capture. Meeting assets, such as summaries and recordings, are now more accessible, with hosts and participants able to share and request materials from the calendar event. Additionally, the platform is extending its ability to share meeting summaries to platforms like Microsoft Teams, helping maintain up-to-date client records. Zoom Workplace additional developments Zoom announced several improvements within Zoom Workplace that support collaboration and productivity. Users can now track document edits in Zoom Docs and publish documents as public pages. Editing for video content has been expanded: users can merge multiple Zoom Clips, preview, and adjust them before publication, and retain originals within their library. These enhancements to Zoom's offering collectively reflect ongoing efforts to provide users with more value and streamline professional collaboration via artificial intelligence and integrations within the digital workplace.
Techday NZ
6 days ago
- Business
- Techday NZ
Zoom debuts AI features for business workflows across apps
Zoom has introduced new agentic AI features designed to enable users to manage tasks and collaborate across multiple business applications directly from the Zoom platform. The updates centre around Zoom's Custom AI Companion add-on, which now offers connectivity to 16 prominent third-party applications. Among these integrations are tools such as ServiceNow, Jira, Salesforce, Asana, and Box, allowing users to produce meeting summaries, assign tasks, and update customer relationship management records without leaving the Zoom environment. With the Custom AI Companion add-on, users can link services including Amazon Q, Glean, and Jira, facilitating indexing, enterprise search, and ticketing functions within the Zoom interface. The addition of further applications aims to offer contextually rich answers and improve workflow orchestration by leveraging intelligent application management. Expanded capabilities Besides the expanded application connections, the add-on is now available for purchase online, extending its functionality to small and medium businesses, freelancers, and individual consultants. The Custom AI Companion now supports meeting summary capabilities for a range of video conferencing platforms, including Google Meet and Microsoft Teams, with Cisco Webex support expected in the future. This development means that professionals often reliant on multiple conferencing platforms can centralise their meeting notes and action items more effectively. Describing the new features, Smita Hashim, Chief Product Officer at Zoom, said: "With Zoom AI Companion's agentic skills, users will see a significant productivity boost to help them get more done - not just in Zoom, but across business-essential apps like ServiceNow, Jira, Asana, Box, and more. The Custom AI Companion add-on empowers users to streamline their workflows by having AI Companion join their Zoom Meetings and in-person meetings, and can now access AI Companion across other video conferencing platforms." For sales and service teams, connecting Zoom AI Companion with ServiceNow, Zendesk, and other platforms is intended to simplify the process of updating records, tracking opportunities, and resolving support tickets in real-time. The AI-driven integration can reduce manual effort and help improve customer interactions by keeping sales pipelines and service logs up to date without leaving Zoom. When linked with platforms such as Microsoft OneDrive, Google Drive, Box, Confluence, Notion, or Coda, AI Companion provides users with secure, in-meeting document access. The system can generate new documents, update existing ones via simple user prompts, or summarise content to assist ongoing discussions. Some document capabilities will be enabled after launch, with additional updates planned. Workflows and productivity AI Companion's integration with Asana and Jira supports streamlined project management. Users can directly query and instruct project management tools to update statuses, assign tasks, or set deadlines, reducing the need to switch between applications. The platform also helps manage communications in third-party messaging apps and supports workflows for recruiters and HR professionals, such as candidate profile searches and onboarding tasks when connected to Workday. For small businesses and freelancers, the online availability of the Custom AI Companion add-on provides broader access to automation across meetings and communications. It supports automatic generation of meeting summaries for non-Zoom meetings, helps educators provide lecture summaries and personalised study videos through custom avatars, and enables sales professionals to automatically update CRM data. Additional features include the ability for AI Companion to join meetings as a delegate, transcribing and summarising content or generating action items. The add-on provides 11 customisable templates for meeting summaries and allows integration with knowledge sources such as Google Drive while respecting organisation-level permissions. The Custom AI Companion add-on is available at a cost of USD $12 per user per month, in addition to paid Zoom Workplace plans. User experience enhancements Zoom has also released enhancements to its core AI Companion for all paid Zoom Workplace licences at no additional charge. The updates include simplified onboarding, smarter agenda creation supported by past meetings or Zoom Docs, and deeper insights via real-time call queries. Users can interact with AI Companion before, during, and after Zoom Phone calls to review main discussion points or priorities, retrieve earlier conversations, and draft follow-up communications. AI Companion can summarise documents shared in Zoom Team Chat, capture notes from in-person meetings using a built-in voice recorder, and generate transcripts and action items for further review. Meeting hosts and participants now have streamlined access to meeting summaries, transcripts, and recordings through calendar integration, with improved sharing options arriving soon for Microsoft Teams and other platforms. Collaboration tools Zoom Docs now allows users to track edits with detailed formatting indicators and publish documents as public webpages. New video editing capabilities enable users to merge multiple Zoom Clips into a single video, preview edits, and preserve the original files for further use. Zoom states that these expanded AI-driven features and integration options are intended to strengthen productivity and collaboration across its platform and help users coordinate their work across apps and environments.
Indian Express
18-06-2025
- Business
- Indian Express
From AI agents to cloud telephony, Zoom executives discuss company's next act
Zoom wants to be much more than a video chat platform. It is taking on Google and Microsoft in enterprise software by shipping productivity tools such as Zoom Documents, Zoom Team Chat, Zoom Whiteboard, etc. It has also rolled out Zoom AI Companion and is integrating AI into all levels of its product suite. Zoom is also looking to strengthen its foothold in India by expanding its cloud-based enterprise telephony service called Zoom Phone to four additional licenced service areas across the country. The company further launched Contact Center here that enables customers to reach out to Zoom's enterprise clients through a wide range of channels, including voice, video, virtual agents, social media, email, and messaging apps. Security is central to everything Zoom does, Steve Rafferty, head of APAC and EMEA at Zoom, told in an exclusive interaction in New Delhi last week. Echoing this, Sameer Raje, the general manager and head of India & SAARC region at Zoom, highlighted the company's federated approach to AI that empowers its customers with greater control, privacy, and choice. Here are the edited excerpts from the interview: Zoom became a household name during the COVID-19 pandemic. Since then, it has pivoted to becoming more than a video conferencing platform. How does Zoom Phone and launching Zoom Contact Center in India further that vision? Steve: If you think of Zoom as a business communications platform, then video and meetings was the first element of that. Lots of organisations enter from different pivots. So we were meetings first, and now we've got chat, Contact Center, Phone, Clips, Documents, and so much more. We're trying to give our customers and partners one place to meet effectively, whether that's message, video, or phone. Whether it's internal communication or messaging externally with customers or suppliers, Zoom will give you that unified platform experience. That was always the plan. We just started with meetings. You mentioned that getting Zoom Phone regulatory compliant in India was an elaborate process. What were some of the terms and conditions involved in the DoT authorisation? Also, what do you think needs to change in terms of the eligibility conditions for cloud-based telephony services? Sameer: Authorisation is basically the license. It's the UL access BMO license which we took in all the six telecom circles [Mumbai, Bengaluru, Chennai, Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh, and Delhi-NCR]. And each of the circles have their own requirements as well as technical call flow, approvals, so on and so forth. It's not as simple as building it once for one telecom circle and having it work everywhere. Logically, yes, the product might be the same but each circle requires its own set of regulatory approvals. When you have a global product, the DoT requirements are very stringent. For instance, all equipment must be certified by DoT. There are specific certification programmes and you cannot just use any hardware. From the hardware to the call flows, we had to change some of the elements of the product to make it compliant within the country. Hence, it was time consuming. Not only that, each telecom circle needs to be connected not only to the Zoom cloud but also to local telcos across the region and country. That includes setting up incoming and outgoing interconnections, which is a complex and time-consuming process. But that doesn't mean that you cannot use Zoom Phone anywhere outside these circles. Right now, these six circles are where you can procure the license from, but you can travel anywhere and accept calls and make calls to anywhere in the country. It's been more than a year since Zoom Workplace was introduced. How's the response been from enterprise clients compared to everyday users in terms of adoption and overall experience? How much of that has translated to sales? Steve: It's been very strong across all of our regions, especially internationally. What we're seeing now is different entry points for customers. Some customers may come in to start from a Contact Center journey because they've got a particular customer requirement, and we fix that. Then they'll adopt Zoom Phone or messaging. The workforce is changing at the moment. We're seeing a lot younger, more diverse workforce come in, and they've really taken to the Zoom platform because you can communicate by chat, you can pick up the phone, you can send a clip, you can join a work meeting, engage with customers, and so on. There's so many different angles to procure information. We've got control of so much data. A business can take that data and deliver better experiences to their customers. Have you noticed differences in how AI features are being adopted across specific use cases like customer support, live translation, meeting summaries, etc? Steve: There's two sides to that. There's the internal day-to-day job, and there's how you communicate with customers. We were with a customer last week at a sports shop. What they want is a specific chatbot for their clients, and they also want to be able to escalate that call really quickly to a human depending on the requirements. So if somebody wants to procure a tennis shoe, it is dead easy to handle. But if somebody wants bespoke running shoes, that's a specialist treatment. That's what we're seeing from a customer perspective. Zoom Workplace allows you to move those conversations around. Sameer: I'll add one critical point to that. We include Zoom Workplace in our license at no extra cost. Any other platform or AI engine may charge $20-$30 per user and the CEO or senior leadership may go for it thinking its the in thing. But are they really going to be that productive? Or does it make more sense to spend that $30 at the lower level so that the support agent can be more productive using AI on Zoom? They should be utilising AI where it makes better sense. It could be customer support or sales. Zoom Workplace can be rolled out across the organisation. One of the other areas that has been very positive to me is having all of that in one location. All the integrations on Zoom Workplace makes life so much easier and gives us hours back every week. While LLMs (large language models) can be quite convincing, trust is still a barrier to enterprise adoption. How do you solve for that? Steve: Security has to be at the heart of everything you do, whether it's AI or whether it's a basic implementation of any technology. We work with our customers, from CISO all the way down, to make sure that the data they're exposing is the correct data. We work with a security bank because you've seen from some of our competitors, how they've exposed people's salaries all the way through a business. We start with the security first? What's the outcome you're looking for, and how can we give you a secure outcome? And then the platform gets deployed based on that. What do you think about the role of AI agents on your platform, especially in automating enterprise workflows? Do you see them evolving into a meaningful revenue stream? Steve: It's about complementing the human workforce. It's not about replacing them. You've seen a lot of press with some organisations saying 'we're going to slim down our workforce. We're going to stick AI agents out there', and then it's difficult. What we do is, is, we speed up that journey for the customer. If you think about booking flights on air travel, for instance, we can pretty much run that whole system through a virtual agent. Sameer: If you look at our AI Companion, it's been embedded in a couple of products that we've introduced like Zoom Whiteboard where you can draw a circle and the AI will actually make it into a perfect circle. Zoom Workflows is also in beta right now. Beyond that, we also introduced Custom AI. Let's say you're in a pharmaceutical industry and you're using a particular terminology. You want the AI model to use that terminology, right? So it allows you to create your own language within that. What is Zoom's approach to AI development? Sameer: We have a federated model. This means we use our own LLMs as well as other industry-standard LLMs (OpenAI and Anthropic's models). That's how we shift between low-cost and high-cost GPUs. We also permit customers to bring their elements to a certain extent. That's a chargeable service. We are helping organisations break down their silos and improvise employee experience. We're quite happy for the customer to work where they want, and we support them with all of our tools and our AI and and our platform underneath. It's quite a different model to others. We've also made a commitment that we won't use customer data to train our models. But you're also in competition with these big tech companies, right? Most of their AI services seem to be bundled into their office suites. Steve: Yes but we don't walk into a Google or a Microsoft customer and say, 'What a terrible decision. You need to rip it all out. Stick Zoom in.' We go: 'Congratulations on your decision. Now, let's make sure you get the best value for money'. Not everything that's bundled works, and you're seeing how those bundles consistently change. What we allow you to do is to take the best video platform and plug it in, as well as the best phone platform if you want to use it. We've got Contact Center that you can plug in to make your Google or Microsoft Office environment sing much better.
