Zoom Updates - Week of November 16, 2020


New Updates to App

Meeting/Webinar Features

  • Share multiple programs at once: Users can select multiple desktop programs at once for sharing, instead of sharing their entire desktop. Other programs and unoccupied areas in the desktop will not be visible to the viewer. The sharer will always know which applications they are sharing by an extensible green border. The user employing this feature will need to be on version 5.4.3; viewers can be connected with older versions.
  • Enhanced gallery view for iPad.
  • Increased support for Virtual Background on Android.

Meeting Features

  • Suspend participant activity: New option in the Security panel to immediately suspend all participant activities, which will mute all video and audio, stop screen sharing, end all breakout rooms, and pause recording.
  • Enhanced in-meeting user abuse reporting.

Chat Features

  • Pin chat messages: Users can pin a message in the channel which will then appear at the top of the channel. Pins can be moved, replaced, or hidden. A log of pinned messages is accessible in the channel options panel.

Phone Features

  • Enhancements to History and Voicemail tabs: UI enhancements to better indicate the location, caller ID, and whether it’s a spam call. Call history entries with a location but no caller ID will indicate the phone number on the first row and location on the second row. Previously, the location was on the first row for these call history entries.

Changes to Existing Features

  • Non-video meeting interface will appear the same as a video meeting with video off: Meetings scheduled with video off will now just show profile pictures or names rather than the plain screen with meeting information and options.

New Updates to Web

Features for Administrators:

  • Setting for participants invited by the host or co-host to bypass the Waiting Room: Account owners and admins can enable a setting for participants invited by the host or co-host to bypass the Waiting Room. This setting is available at the account, group, and user level and can be locked at the account or group level. This setting is turned off by default. This requires client/app version 5.4.0 or higher.
  • Zoom Rooms support for video Virtual Background with green screen: Account owners and admins can enable video Virtual Background with green screen for Zoom Rooms. This requires Zoom Rooms version 5.3.0, which is planned for release in November 2020.
  • Virtual receptionist / kiosk mode for Zoom Rooms: Account owners and admins can enable kiosk mode for specific Zoom Rooms, allowing visitors to easily connect to a virtual receptionist. This requires Zoom Rooms version 5.3.0, which is planned for release in November 2020. This feature is in beta and needs to be enabled by Zoom.

Features for Users:

  • Improved security notifications: Users will receive confirmation emails after certain actions are taken, i.e. password change, phone number updates, host key change.

Google Calendar Changes

Beginning Monday, November 16, Zoom will no longer be the automatic default option for scheduling video meetings in Google Calendar. To make Zoom your default video conferencing provider in Google Calendar, access your GSuite apps from the Google Admin console dashboard and uncheck “Make Google the default video conferencing provider when available.” Then, install Zoom for all users in the Google Marketplace and check “Automatically add video calls to events users create” in the Video Conferencing Share settings.

Note that no action is required for customers who do not have Google Meet enabled for video conferencing. If you and your users utilize both Zoom and Google Meet for video conferencing, you should still disable Google Meet as your default video conferencing provider, as you and your users will be able to select which meetings you’d like to hold over Google Meet and which you’d like to hold over Zoom.

For more information regarding this change, please read our support article here.



Page last modified December 6, 2020