Zoom recently announced the availability of Zoom AI Companion capabilities for Zoom Meetings and Zoom Team Chat as part of Zoom Workplace. AI Companion is the company’s generative AI assistant, which is offered at no extra cost, and Team Chat enables users to draft quick replies based on AI.

AI Companion enables quick replies for mobile by suggesting short contextual replies when using Team Chat on a mobile device. According to Zoom, this will help people who are on the go "stay connected and aligned with their teams from anywhere." The feature can offer suggested responses based on the text of the thread itself.

"Good communication fosters productive employee relationships and collaboration," Zoom said in an announcement. "AI Companion helps today’s workforces by providing a solution that powers communications whether users are in the office, at home, or on the go."

Users will know when an AI Companion feature is enabled in a meeting as it will give a notice to meeting attendees indicating that it has been activated. This is a feature located in the admin portal. Admins can customize the notice setting to include their own text, formatting, and hyperlinks to provide a more tailored experience, for those who might want to add branding or policy info, for example.

New external collaboration settings can be accessed from the dashboard in Team Chat to provide admins with more control and visibility into external users. The settings are available at the account level and can be configured at the external company/account level. They can help admins enable approvals so external users can be added to group chats and channels.

"For example, an admin can enable approvals (to add external users to group chats and channels) at the account level, but disable it for a given partner company so that users can be added without approval," the company explains. "Admins can also view all external connections in their account in the new External Connections dashboard. This helps to streamline communications by providing admins with more granular control of external users."

A new Global Search feature will enable users to find information more easily based on info and resources across Zoom Workplace. This can be used to find data, documents, etc. across meeting recordings, SMS messages, files in Zoom Team Chat messages, channels, and files, contact names, Zoom Notes, Zoom Whiteboards, Zoom Events Webinars, and Shared Spaces.

These new features indicate that Zoom is not only improving for remote work, but also for hybrid scenarios.

Businesses that use Workvivo can now quickly distribute critical company news to employees and clients across multiple locations via new Zoom Rooms integration, which enables users to broadcast updates, news, and events using Workvivo TV on Zoom Rooms digital signage.

Finally, Companion Zoom Rooms let businesses optimize in-person time by using touch devices and cameras to expand the use of multiple screens and cameras from other companion devices, which Zoom says helps teams by enabling them to optimize different spaces for hybrid meetings.