Most of us are looking at several more months of working from home, but some companies need to start returning employees to the office, if only to stay in business. However, safety is still a top concern, so several software vendors have released general return-to-work (RTW) applications, as well as more targeted solutions, like those aimed at contact tracing and space management.
The latest entry in the RTW arena comes from an unexpected vector: Zoom. Most know the company for its hugely popular (and PCMag Editors’ Choice-winning) video conferencing solution, Zoom Meetings, which has been indispensable to many people who suddenly found themselves working entirely from home. The app has seen huge growth numbers during the pandemic, as both businesses and consumers upped their use of this technology for everything from staff meetings to graduation parties. Zoom has seen over 300 million daily participants during the past year, but that hasn’t kept it from expanding its other product lines.
Key there is Zoom Rooms, which is the company’s smart conference room solution. You can buy the Zoom Rooms solution to turn a typical meeting room into what the company calls a “fully modernized” collaboration space. That covers features like one-touch join to existing video calls, optimized wireless connectivity, and smart whiteboarding for collaborative editing and annotation. Zoom Rooms covers all these features in an all-Zoom solution, while a sibling, Zoom Connector, allows customers to use related devices they might already have installed, like speakerphones or video cameras from makers such as Cisco or Polycom.
Getting Back to Work
With a product line focused on modernizing the more traditional office, it made sense for Zoom to add features aimed at getting employees back to work. To do that, the company is adding RTW safety features as updates to Zoom Rooms.
Starting today, Zoom has added what it says are user-requested features to existing Zoom Rooms subscriptions. This includes enabling participants’ mobile devices so they can act as remote controls for in-meeting consoles. There’s also a real-time people count so office administrators know the exact number of workers in the conference room at any given time, which will help them limit room population to safe levels. Finally, certain Zoom Rooms appliances will now be able to monitor a room’s environment, including temperature and air quality.
“During the summer, we were very focused on enabling remote workers with our Zoom for Home program. [But] we also heard from customers preparing to return to the office about their concerns for doing that safely,” said Jeff Smith, Head of Zoom Rooms at Zoom.
Employers probably face the most work when it comes to RTW, but employees will certainly have concerns as this transition draws closer, particularly around their safety and how day-to-day work habits will need to change. These are the kinds of issues Zoom is looking to address with its new updates.
“Understanding that employees have to limit the amount of touching [on] shared surfaces, they can now pair their [own] Apple iOS or Google Android devices to remotely control Zoom Rooms to start a meeting. On their devices, they can control the audio and video, mute and unmute, and also have camera control,” explains Smith.
Reading a Room With Sensors
An example of an applicable Zoom meeting room appliance he cites is the Neat Bar, a $2,500 Zoom Rooms collaboration device with a camera and speakers that senses and collects real-time data on how many persons are in the room at a given time. This feature can help enforce social-distancing guidelines in offices.
The Neat Bar also has sensors that can measure a room’s CO2 levels, its temperature, and volatile organic compound (VOC) levels. “This can help IT groups monitor the efficacy of their ventilation and environmental systems, like heating and air conditioning,” said Smith. Participants can view this data on their Zoom dashboard, on the Zoom Rooms Controller, and on the scheduling display for real-time data on the meeting room’s overall safety.
Smith also said that “the room capacity information is sent to the end user on the scheduling display, as well as back to the IT manager in the dashboard.” There are, however, no proactive alerts in the event that conference room attendees exceed social-distancing limits. Smith said Zoom is working on such an alerting system that should follow in a future software update.
Receptionists Going Virtual
In addition to smartening up your conference rooms, Zoom is also enabling a virtual receptionist. For most, this will be a kiosk experienced powered by Zoom Rooms for Touch devices. Originally built as a collaboration solution for small or casual meeting spaces, Zoom has modified it to enable a virtual receptionist experience.
“The Virtual Receptionist is a fully programmable interface where offices can set their branding or their desired look and feel.” Smith says. “It can be activated by an action button to call reception. This can be one receptionist, or a pool of receptionists.” The kiosk can connect to pre-selected staff on-site or even those working remotely.
“The kiosk mode for the Virtual Receptionist, has been requested for years,” Smith noted. “So, that was a priority shift for us because of the current situation.”
The new Zoom Rooms features are available now and current customers can enable them from the administrator portal.
