Zoom’s New Agentic AI Tools Aim to Boost Efficiency and Connectivity

Zoom Communications has announced the release of new agentic AI capabilities designed to help users complete tasks across platforms and save time during the workday. The introduction of the Custom AI Companion add-on allows Zoom AI Companion to connect with 16 third-party applications, enabling task orchestration without leaving the Zoom environment.

The Custom AI Companion add-on is now available for online purchase, offering small business owners the ability to leverage AI Companion across various video conferencing platforms, customize meeting summary templates, create custom avatars, and connect third-party applications to boost productivity. This aims to help them focus on building and growing their businesses.

“With Zoom AI Companion’s agentic skills, users will see a significant productivity boost to help them get more done — not just in Zoom, but across business-essential apps like ServiceNow, Jira, Salesforce, Asana, Box, and more,” said Smita Hashim, chief product officer at Zoom. “The Custom AI Companion add-on empowers users to streamline their workflows by having AI Companion join their Zoom Meetings and in-person meetings, and can now access AI Companion across other video conferencing platforms.”

AI Companion leverages agentic AI capabilities to maximize efficiency, allowing users to save time and accomplish more without exiting Zoom Workplace. With the Custom AI Companion add-on, users can currently connect to applications such as Amazon Q, Glean, and Jira for indexing, enterprise search, and ticketing functionalities. New app connectors are also designed to provide context-rich answers and facilitate task completion across workstreams through intelligent app orchestration.

Key integrations and their benefits include:

1. Improved Sales and Service Outcomes: By connecting to Salesforce, ServiceNow, and Zendesk, AI Companion can help teams resolve service tickets, track opportunities, and update records in real-time directly from Zoom, accelerating decisions and enhancing customer satisfaction.
2. Reimagined Document Collaboration: Integration with Microsoft OneDrive, Google Drive, Box, Confluence, Notion, or Coda allows AI Companion to facilitate discussions with secure access to existing documents during meetings. Users can also generate new documents based on current meetings, update existing documents with prompts, or obtain quick document summaries. (Not all document features are available at launch).
3. Simplified Project Management: When linked with Asana and Jira, AI Companion enables users to query and command project tools, update project statuses, assign tasks, and set deadlines without the need for app-juggling or manual workflows.
4. Reduced Communication Silos: Users can keep chats and ideas organized in Slack with the ability to search, summarize, and post messages directly from AI Companion.
5. Recruitment and Onboarding Support: When connected to Workday, AI Companion can expedite recruiting, interview, and onboarding workflows through search and summary capabilities for open jobs and candidate profiles.

The Custom AI Companion add-on, now available for online purchase, extends AI Companion’s meeting summary capabilities to third-party video conferencing platforms and introduces agentic AI features to assist small businesses. This is particularly beneficial for entrepreneurs, solopreneurs, small business owners, and consultants who frequently switch between meeting platforms.

Professional Service Providers can simplify workflows and save time beyond Zoom Meetings, Zoom Phone calls, and in-person meetings by utilizing AI-generated meeting summaries across various meeting platforms. Integrations, such as with Asana, allow for automatic project updates without leaving the meeting.

Sales Professionals can nurture client relationships and reduce administrative time by automatically updating sales records in CRMs like Salesforce based on conversation content. Educators can go beyond meeting summaries and lecture plans to reliably generate summaries and takeaways with custom templates that can be shared with students to reinforce learning. They can also create personalized videos using Custom Avatars for Zoom Clips to connect with students in different languages.

With the Custom AI Companion add-on, small businesses can connect AI Companion to the 16 aforementioned applications and tailor its skills to address their unique needs and enhance organizational efficiency:

1. Cross-Platform Functionality: Zoom is an open platform, and AI Companion can attend third-party meetings, including Microsoft Teams and Google Meet, with Cisco Webex support planned for future release. AI Companion can join meetings on a user’s behalf to transcribe, summarize, and deliver actionable follow-ups automatically.
2. AI-Generated Clips: Custom Avatars for Zoom Clips enable users to create an avatar in their likeness, provide a transcript, and have AI Companion generate a clip, saving time and aiding in content scaling.
3. Customizable Meeting Summaries: Users can transform meetings into tailored, actionable summaries by selecting from 11 purpose-built templates designed to match the tone, structure, and focus of each meeting.
4. Expanded Knowledge Base: Administrators can connect Google Drive or Microsoft OneDrive accounts as data sources in AI Studio, respecting existing permission controls. Additionally, public URLs can be crawled as a data source for knowledge collections, allowing AI Companion to provide more relevant answers to user queries.

The Custom AI Companion add-on is now available for online purchase at $12 per user per month with paid Zoom Workplace plans.

Zoom AI Companion continues to improve productivity and collaboration within Zoom Workplace. These capabilities are included at no additional charge as part of Zoom AI Companion for all paid Zoom Workplace licenses.

1. Faster Onboarding: A new onboarding experience within the Zoom desktop app simplifies the configuration of AI Companion settings, including which meetings are summarized, who summaries are shared with, and how they are distributed.
2. Improved Meeting Agendas: Users can easily structure upcoming meetings by creating agendas from templates. AI Companion can also leverage previous meetings or Zoom Docs to create more tailored agendas.
3. Enhanced Call Insights: Users can now query AI Companion before, during, and after Zoom Phone calls to catch up and gain deeper insights. They can ask questions like, “What was the disagreement about?” or “Can you tell me the main points being discussed?” AI Companion can also retrieve information from previous conversations, prioritize missed calls, and draft follow-up messages.
4. Document Summaries in Chat: AI Companion can summarize supported text-based documents shared in Zoom Team Chat, enabling quick and efficient digestion of new information without leaving the chat thread.
5. In-Person Interaction Notes: AI Companion supports in-person meetings with the Voice Recorder, transcribing, summarizing, and capturing action items, allowing users to focus on the conversation and revisit details later.
6. Easy Access to Meeting Assets: Users can access meeting summaries, transcripts, recordings, and event details from the meeting card in the calendar event and via email. Hosts will also be able to share assets with participants via the meeting card in Zoom Calendar (coming later this month), and participants can request access via the Zoom Calendar event.
7. Seamless Sharing: AI Companion can be configured to automatically share meeting summaries to other platforms, updating counterparts and refreshing customer records with the latest conversation highlights.

Zoom Workplace continues to accelerate collaboration and facilitate effortless ideation, creation, and delivery of work within a single application.

1. Track Edits and Publish Externally in Zoom Docs: Users can easily track content changes in documents, highlighting additions, deletions, replacements, and formatting with specific styles. Zoom Docs can also now be published as public webpages, accessible to anyone.
2. Stitch, Combine, and Create Longer Clips: Multiple Zoom Clips can be merged into one seamless video without external applications. Users can preview and make adjustments before finalizing edits, while preserving original content.