Meetings are an integral part of our workday. If the future of work is remote, then we will continue to rely on Zoom more, not less to get our job done. Once you realize the fact that Zoom is most often the doorway to meet your team, users, and customers, you’ll start looking for ways to upgrade your meetings.
The best place to start is the latest zoom features. Leveraging the right features can substantially improve the results of your meetings and how you run your business as a whole. But it’s hard to keep up with all the new Zoom features and pick the ones that are worth trying.
As a distributed company with teams spread across several time zones, we use Zoom quite extensively. After several trial and error rounds, we’ve curated the best Zoom features for you to start with.
Note that this isn’t the comprehensive list of features ever released by Zoom. We’re just highlighting the best Zoom new features you need in 2024. Alright, let’s get started.
Updating your Zoom Desktop Client
Before we get into the features, you need to ensure that your Zoom desktop client is up to date. To update your Zoom desktop application:
- Open up the app on your computer.
- Click your profile picture icon on the top right side of the screen.
- Scroll down to “Check for Updates”.
- Select “Update”.
Best Zoom New Features to Try in 2023
Here’s the complete list of Zoom features we’ll walk you through in this post:
- Immersive view
- Blurred background
- Powerpoint as a virtual background
- Live transcription
- Clip and share highlights
- Suppress background noise
- Zoom App search
- Improved Zoom Chat
- Zoom keyboard shortcuts
- Enhanced data privacy
1. Immersive View
An immersive view enables you to pull all the meeting participants into a single virtual background, allowing everyone to discuss and collaborate in a cohesive virtual space.
You’ll be able to create a suitable virtual meeting room experience based on the context of your meeting. From classrooms to boardrooms, you can set your immersive background and get everyone together to connect seamlessly.
If your team is tired of Zoom meeting tiles, enabling an immersive view can improve the experience.
Note that you can only have up to 25 participants in an immersive meeting environment. So, it’s not ideal for all-hands meetings. The immersive view is available for Windows and macOS users for all accounts—both free and pro—as long as you’re using the latest version of Zoom.
How to enable an Immersive view?
During the meeting, click View > Immersive > Select a preloaded scene or upload your own.
Related: Best Zoom Add-Ons to Make Your Meetings Insanely Productive.
2. Blurred background
Blurred background is perhaps the feature you’d need more often than others. As we’re working from home, our background isn’t always tidy and pleasant. So, Zoom introduced blurred backgrounds—to help us blur just the background.
Go to Settings > Background & Filters > Virtual Background > Blur. Voila! Your background will be blurred, making it easier to hop on a call from anywhere.
3. Powerpoint as Virtual Background
The PowerPoint as Virtual Background feature gives you the ability to put a PowerPoint presentation as your background. This puts your presentation in the spotlight and gives you the option of overlaying a webcam image of yourself in the corner.
To implement this feature on your next Zoom call:
- Start a new Zoom call
- Press “Share Screen” on the bottom middle part of your screen
- Click “Advanced” on the top middle tab of the screen
- Click “Powerpoint” as Virtual Background
- Click “Share” and you’re done!
4. Live Closed Captions
In today’s remote-working world, making your meetings more accessible is essential. Not everyone in your team will have English as their first language and live transcription will allow the entire team to keep up with the discussion and contribute effectively.
Additionally, the use of closed captions during online meetings can help improve information retention and help compensate for poor audio quality.
While there are plenty of Zoom transcription services, you can start with the native feature from Zoom.
To enable the ability to use closed captions:
- Login into the browser version of Zoom
- On the left-hand side, open settings options panel click “Admin”
- Scroll down to “Account Management”
- Click “Account Settings” from the dropdown menu
- Click “In Meeting (Advanced)”
- Toggle the “Closed Captioning” option to “on”
- Exit the “Account Settings” display and you will now see a “Closed Caption” option on your call dashboard.
There are three different ways to get live transcription. You can integrate a 3rd-party transcription provider via API, assign someone in the meeting to type manually, or use Zoom’s auto-transcription. Regardless of whatever you choose, please note that there are several limitations.
Alternatively, you can also sign up for a live transcription tool like Grain to get accurate transcription in real-time.
The added benefit is, Grain will automatically record and preserve the meeting, along with its transcript, in a cloud workspace. You can log in and access the recordings or download the transcripts, anytime anywhere.
If you’re investing in Grain, you also get to clip and share key moments from Zoom in real-time as well.
5. Clip and Share Zoom Highlights
Whether you are repurposing content for social media, creating live training videos for your staff, or just sharing a meeting recap, you can accomplish all of your content-sharing goals with Grain.
During your meeting, you can use Grain to capture notes, timestamp important moments, and share them with employees or clients. All you have to do is create a free account to get started and download the Grain Desktop app.
6. Suppress Background Noise
For many on-site workers, the transition to working from home has proved to be more difficult than expected. Utilizing Zoom’s new in-app feature, you can adjust your audio settings to compensate for background noises in your audio feed.
To utilize the new audio adjustment settings:
- Go to your “Settings” within the Zoom Desktop app
- Click the arrow next to the “Mute” button if you’re in a call
- From “Settings” go to “Audio”
- Scroll to “Suppress background noise” and adjust the settings to your preference.
7. Zoom App Search
Sometimes we drop useful messages and documents on Zoom Chat during our calls—especially with external stakeholders and customers. Besides, it’s much easier to use the same platform to share documents than to email/Slack it after the call.
Zoom’s new desktop app provides a universal modern search interface—enabling you to discover and retrieve any message or files instantly.
It also searches across the messages from channels.
8. Zoom Chat
While most of us either use Slack or Microsoft Teams, we sometimes rely on Zoom Chat. Zoom Chat allows you to direct message, anyone, in your contact list and create channels to discuss in groups.
If you haven’t used Zoom Chat yet, it’s worth giving it a try when you can’t use Slack or any other real-time messaging platform.
9. Keyboard Shortcuts
Do you typically copy and send meeting invites to your team members over Slack once the meeting starts? If so, you’ll love this shortcut.
Once you go into Settings, you’ll see an option to enable “Copy invite link when sharing a meeting”. It allows you to automatically copy the invite URL to your keyboard and paste it anywhere once the meeting starts.
That’s not all. You can also enable global shortcuts to double the speed at which you operate during your meetings.
Go to Settings > Keyboard shortcuts. You’ll have the ability to both edit the shortcut keys and enable the ones which you’d like to use.
10. Enhanced Data Privacy
There is always a risk that the privacy of your Zoom meetings is compromised. When holding an in-person meeting, you can simply close the door when discussing confidential information. In online meetings, unauthorized users can end up gaining access and breaching your confidentiality.
Today, end-to-end encryption security measures have become standard in Zoom. With Zoom’s new encryption measures, you can be assured that your videos and messages are kept private between you and your meeting attendees. Although Zoom has improved its security measures, it’s also important for your company to implement cybersecurity best practices.
To help prevent unauthorized access to your Zoom meetings:
- Only share your meeting ID with trusted contacts
- Avoid using your meeting ID for large meetings
- Avoid changing the standard security settings that set every meeting to “private”
- If you need to hold public meetings, enable a password requirement for entry
- Use cybersecurity best practices, including the installation of antivirus software
Closing thoughts
Meetings in a remote-first environment are too important to join without any preparation. If you use Zoom to connect with your team, users, customers, or other stakeholders, take the necessary steps to ensure you’re getting the best out of the time spent on meetings.
Learn how to run productive meetings and learn when to have asynchronous meetings. More importantly, learn how to leverage new Zoom features and different meeting tools to collaborate effectively.