Many people have been on a whole lot of Zoom calls in the course of the pandemic, however you won’t know that Zoom additionally has its very personal Slack- and Microsoft Groups-esque product known as Zoom Chat. On Monday, Zoom introduced a small change to the identify of the product — it’s now known as Zoom Staff Chat — alongside a handful of different helpful updates coming to the collaboration software program.
Let’s begin with the identify change. Zoom is including “Staff” as a result of clients had been getting confused in regards to the distinction between the chat you should utilize in Zoom conferences with the separate communication suite. Renaming the product to Zoom Staff Chat “helps make the excellence that it’s a full collaborative hub product,” Sharvari Nerurkar, Zoom Staff Chat’s head of product, stated in an interview with The Verge.
The concept for Zoom Staff Chat is that it may be a singular collaboration hub the place you’ll be able to work with colleagues in actual time on calls or asynchronously over textual content chat. Should you’re like me, it’s possible you’ll already be doing this mixture of video, voice, and textual content to speak along with your co-workers however throughout totally different items of software program. (Right here at The Verge, we sometimes chat over Slack however do video calls over Zoom.)
In case your office makes use of Zoom for video calls, you’ll be able to theoretically do a lot of your office communication in a single place with Zoom Staff Chat with out having to leap from app to app. “Our clients are telling us that [they] don’t need the friction of leaping to a number of totally different merchandise to collaborate with the identical group of individuals,” Nerurkar stated.
To enhance the expertise of truly utilizing Zoom Staff Chat, Zoom has a couple of new options that it’s aiming to launch by the tip of the month. One replace is that you just’ll be capable of share in-meeting chat proper into Zoom Staff Chat, making it simpler to see any vital notes (or your witty commentary) after the assembly is over. You’ll additionally be capable of schedule a Zoom assembly proper from a Zoom Staff Chat channel, which might be helpful when you’re having a textual content dialog that may lend itself to a name.
That stated, Zoom is going through fierce competitors from the likes of Slack, Microsoft, and Google, all of that are quickly constructing out their very own office communication merchandise to assist organizations adapt to hybrid work environments. Whereas the Zoom Staff Chat updates on the best way appear helpful, the corporate could have an uphill battle to persuade workplaces to modify to Zoom Staff Chat from platforms they may already be aware of.