Zoom has announced a number of new updates and features to its video conferencing software that will help organizations be more productive and get the most out of their meetings.
According to a new blog post, hosts will now be able to schedule a meeting with Focus mode set to start automatically. While this feature was originally designed for online learning, it can also help large organizations with large numbers of employees focus on their task during meetings.
For those unfamiliar with Zoom's focus mode, meeting participants are in a view where they can only see themselves, the host and / or co-hosts, and the shared content. However, hosts and co-hosts can also choose to show attendees in Gallery view, allowing them to see everyone at once.
Speaking of the gallery view, Zoom has also added the ability to save a custom gallery view order. Meeting hosts can now save a custom gallery order for each unique meeting ID, allowing them to upload the saved custom order before a meeting, rather than having to manually change the order each time they participate in a video call .
Video mail
In addition to helping users have more productive meetings, Zoom also announced a new update to its cloud phone system that will make it easier for colleagues to stay in touch.
While voicemail was the only option to leave a message for someone when they weren't answering the phone, these days most people don't even check their voicemail. For this reason, Zoom has decided to offer its users a more personalized alternative to standard voicemail.
Zoom Phone users can now greet colleagues with video greetings that allow them to leave video messages directly from their voicemail inbox. You can refer to this support document on Zoom to start leaving video greetings or video messages for your co-workers.
While some users have returned to the office full time, other organizations have introduced hybrid work policies where some people are in the office and some are at home. With new Zoom tools, employees can stay connected to their teams, whether they work from home or in the field.
Do you want to improve your video calls? Check out our roundups of the best video conferencing software, the best professional webcams, and the best conference calling headsets.