With the recent release of Zoom Team Chat, the company has already invaded the areas of Slack and Microsoft Teams, and now the race has begun for a complete hybrid work solution that includes instant communication, video, and email. Zoom is taking a closer look at Microsoft 365 (formally Office 365), notably letting businesses choose to connect to their existing email service or, if they don’t have an IT department, host it for them.
Small businesses surviving the pandemic may need to migrate their outdated email servers to a more secure platform, especially if they don’t have the IT staff to maintain them. Now, Zoom Mail and Calendar services are another solution that businesses can strongly consider when compared to products like Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace — after all, they probably use Zoom meetings anyway.
In a company blog, writes Zoom head of product Joseph Chong that Zoom mail is end-to-end encrypted within Zoom Mail Service users. “The Zoom Mail and Calendar Services (beta) are aimed at small to medium-sized business customers who particularly value email privacy,” Chong wrote. The all-in-one solution is designed to avoid users having to switch apps when group messaging and starting a video meeting with the team or responding to a customer’s email.
Calendars in Zoom make it easier to start meetings by eliminating the need to fiddle with Zoom links or see who’s already in the room before joining. You can also see which meetings have been completed and see a recording link without waiting for the staff to complete upload and manually send to your team.
Zoom also shared some other new features at its event. One is called Zoom Spots, which tries to “bring the fluid interactions of personal work” by keeping your and your teammates’ cameras on in a virtual co-working space. Zoom Spots will be available in early 2023.
Zoom also has a new AI-powered chatbot called Zoom Virtual Agent that can solve customer problems and help businesses reduce call volume to human agents. It will be available in 2023.
Update 3:23 PM ET: Added new details of the ‘@zmail.com’ domain and supported calendar integrations with Microsoft and Google.
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