Zoom has launched a new calendar alignment solution, Zoom Scheduler, to reduce friction for planning meetings and streamline collaboration.
Zoom Scheduler aims to reduce the “toggle tax” of moving between various applications like a user’s email, calendar, and video communications service, which saps productivity. Zoom Scheduler is appointment scheduling and management within Zoom’s platform. Users produce availability slots for meeting attendees, and then the attendees can select a preferred time that works for everyone’s calendars.
Zoom’s announcement wrote:
Zoom Scheduler (now generally available) is designed to reduce the time and hassle of appointment scheduling with people outside your organization through seamless integration with the Zoom platform, making it easier to meet and collaborate.”
The solution automatically syncs with Zoom Mail and Calendar, Google Calendar, and Microsoft 365 to ensure users’ scheduling and communications services are unified when they need to organise and join a meeting. Users can scan availability across every application or platform participants use when planning a meeting.
Zoom’s announcement suggests several use cases that apply to diverse industries. These include salespeople attempting to book more appointments and close deals, customer success teams offering ongoing client support and relationship development, and nonprofits automating scheduling for “services like document renewals, volunteer slots and blood drives, and more”.
Free and paid Zoom users can trial the product for free anytime before July 19, 2023. After that date, the solution will be available for purchase at $5.99/month per user. Zoom Scheduler will also be included in the Zoom One Business Plus and Enterprise Plus plans.
Zoom Scheduler’s Specific Features
Zoom Scheduler includes several other notable features, including booking schedules, which create a recurring availability instance. A “one-to-many attendees” feature allows multiple users to sign up for one slot.
Also included are automated and customised email notifications, allowing users to personalise email reminders and meeting confirmations. Customised form fields extract wanted information during the attendee booking process.
Soon, users will be able to build a branded booking page too. Users can customise their appointment booking page’s colours, logos, and more to align with their brand voice.
Zoom’s Recent Launches
In other Zoom news this week, the vendor partnered with Sony to bring its video communications and collaboration platform to BRAVIA TVs.
The solution, available as a Zoom for TV app through Google TV, aims to help users quickly connect with colleagues for video meetings in remote or hybrid working environments.
“We are thrilled to work with Sony to bring Zoom to their BRAVIA TVs,” commented Eric Yu, Head of Hardware Partnership at Zoom. “We are allowing our customers to enjoy the best of both worlds – the convenience of video conferencing on their TV and the power of Zoom’s collaboration tools.”
Zoom on BRAVIA TV leverages the feature set of Zoom’s platform — including screen sharing, collaboration tools and video communications through the TV — with BRAVIA Camera’s advanced features. These involve spatial recognition of where users are in the room and how far they might be from the TV, analysis which the camera can then use to adapt the sound and picture settings.
Earlier this month, Zoom introduced new data storage tools to give users greater control and insights into their privacy. Among the various features Zoom is launching are European Economic Area (EEA)-based localised data storage, data subject access areas, and audit log tracking.
However, Zoom’s most significant launches this year revolve around its AI investments.
This month, Zoom IQ’s generative AI-powered features became available for customers on select plans on a free trial basis. Those users could access the Zoom Meeting summary and Zoom Team Chat compose offerings intended to enhance productivity and empower better collaboration. Zoom’s OpenAI-powered features were initially shown at this year’s Enterprise Connect.
Meeting summaries mean meeting hosts can generate a summary powered by Zoom’s large language models and share it via Zoom Team Chat and email without recording the conversation manually. Hosts receive automated summaries and can share them with attendees and those who couldn’t attend.
The Zoom Team Chat compose feature allows users to draft messages inferred from the context of a chat thread. The feature can alter message tone and length and redraft responses to customise text recommendations.
In May, Zoom also invested in Anthropic to build its AI capabilities. The collaboration with AI safety and research business Anthropic builds upon Zoom’s federated approach to AI by integrating Anthropic’s AI assistant, Claude, with Zoom’s collaborative platform. Zoom Contact Centre will be the first Zoom solution integrated with Claude.
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