Zoom Room: New Feature to Help People Get Back to Office Environment Safely

Sieeka Khan, Tech Times 03 February 2021, 01:02 pm

The coronavirus pandemic has forced millions of people around the world to stay at home and work from home.

But now that COVID-19 vaccines are being distributed, there will come a time when people can go back to the office, and slowly lead a normal life.

Since this is inevitable, Zoom wants to ease the concerns of the people as soon as you are inside the office. The video-calling app is rolling out Zoom Rooms updates that will help people minimize contact with their colleagues in meeting rooms and in other areas of the office.

Zoom Room rules

The Zoom Room feature will start at the front desk, a Kiosk Mode that lets a viral receptionist greet you from a Rooms for Touch Device. Users can view the occupancy of a meeting room through the Zoom Dashboard that is equipped with compatible cameras.

Users can also check a room's air quality, an upgrade that will be done on February 11, with a Neat Sense monitor to make sure that the room is well-ventilated, according to Yahoo Finance.

Also Read: Zoom Fatigue: A Real Sickness That You Must Acknowledge; Science Proves Its Existence

Users will not have to touch the shared surfaces often too. They can use the Zoom Rooms Controller app in order to steer a meeting on their phone instead of using a shared controller.

Rooms for Touch users can also steer the desktop of the person who is currently sharing their screen. There will be a future upgrade introduced, and it will bring wider support for voice commands that are hands-free, including Alexa control over Rooms devices.

Zoom will also help users if they can't or they wish not to attend meetings in person. Users can also send a Rooms for Touch whiteboard to a Zoom chat or email for those who can't be physically present.

Zoom for Home devices can both host and join scheduled OnZoom sessions for when users are working from home. Rooms and Zoom for Home devices can now get and show meeting reactions.

The Room devices and computers is equipped with real-time transcriptions so users won't have to miss an update if the environment is not appropriate for meetings.

Most of these upgrades will be widely available in the near future. Some of the Zoom Room's features might only get use until the pandemic subsidies. They could still help people slowly ease back into regular human contact.

Zoom does not have much choice, in some regards. The app could lose its many videoconference users once it is safe to commute to work, and these upgrades should help the app stay relevant.

Zoom's growth during the pandemic

Zoom's growth rate was impressive in 2020. In April, the firm's software jumped 30-fold as the pandemic forced people to stay at home and go online to work and learn, according to BBC.

The company catered to more than 300 million participants every day who went to virtual meetings. Paying customers, on the other hand, tripled. In 2020 alone, Zoom's sale shoot up as high as $1.8 billion, which is double than what the firm predicted in March 2020.

Now that the world is slowly preparing to go back to normal as herd immunity is on its way, it is interesting to see what Zoom will do to keep the ball rolling.