Zoom's 10 Biggest Innovations of 2021

Collaborative solutions are still necessary as virtual meetings continue in hybrid work environments. In this clip from "3 Minute Stocks Updates" on Motley Fool Live, recorded on Jan. 5, Motley Fool contributors Brian Withers and Toby Bordelon discuss how Zoom Video Communications (ZM 1.46%) has continued to innovate in order to further support both hybrid and remote work environments.

Brian Withers: Let me move on to Zoom Video Communications, ticker symbol ZM. At the end of December, Zoom has a blog and they released a year-end review, per se, of what they called game-changing Zoom innovations you may not have heard about yet. There's 10 of them. So we're going to go through them real quick. First one is Smart Gallery, which allows you to be in a conference room with a number of other people but look like you're at home on your Zoom computer. Everybody has their own viewing space, making it much more of a collaborative experience. There's auto-generated captions. If you are deaf, actually, you can auto-generate captions. It allows people who can't hear to be able to see what's going on in the meeting. That's amazing. If you have Zoom phone, you can use Zoom's video mail. Rather than just leaving a voice mail, you can use a video and express your point [laughs] with more emphasis if you want. Zoom Rooms voice commands. This isn't super exciting, but with health and safety challenges as people come back to the office and maybe don't want to touch things that other people have touched. Zoom Rooms, it's like hey Alexa or hey Google (GOOG 0.37%). It's hey Zoom, and Zoom Rooms will respond to you. Along the safety guidelines, you can pair Zoom Rooms to your mobile device. I use Roku (ROKU 1.91%), and I can use my phone as a device to control the Roku on the screen, same with Zoom Rooms. It makes it so you don't have to touch the common control pad there. They have a virtual receptionist. You can stick a screen in your lobby and people can come on and click the screen and the receptionist can greet them from wherever they are. They also have a kiosk mode where you can maybe have a couple of options and they can tell you maybe the safety features in the facility, such as wearing your mask and stay six feet away and whatnot, or information about what the company does there. Slide control, not super exciting, but if you're talking too much and Toby is watching the slides and I've moved onto the next slide, he can change the slide to update the slide. You can make a couple of people be able to control that. You have Workplace Reservation where when you go to any Zoom Room, there's a screen that has the schedule. If that schedule is filled up for that Zoom Room, you can click out and you can reserve another conference room from standing in front of that Zoom Room reservation some place across the other building. Zoom Apps, super cool, is allowing third-party companies to build apps on top of Zoom's platform to have a more engaging and more useful environment. Lastly, for those Zoom-ers who use Zoom a lot at home for their office and calling grandma, you can set up a Zoom for home experience and have a dedicated terminal for your Zoom-ing. That is the 2021 Zoom innovations you may not have heard about.

Toby Bordelon: Brian, I feel like there's a few of those we could be using ourselves when we do Fool Live from time to time. We may have to look at that. What's your favorite 2021 innovation from Zoom and how does it help the company not lose subscribers when the pandemic ends?

Withers: Yeah. As companies go back to a hybrid environment, the tendency might be to well, if you're not in the conference room, you're not in the meeting. Well, that's not going to be possible. It's likely a third to a half of folks will be outside the office or maybe remote. How this used to work is you could call in and the one person would be remote and they'd get minimized. But with the Smart Gallery function, that turns that on its head, and it allows everybody to have a view on the screen and a more collaborative environment no matter where anybody is. I love this hybrid solution and the fact that Zoom Rooms can be used as companies come back into work in a more hybrid manner.