February 01, 2017
User Review: "Zoom is a New World Video Platform"
Reliability and Availability
10
TrustRadius
Zoom is an online meeting and video conferencing platform.https://media.trustradius.com/product-logos/X0/J2/JJQC92U6VWBP.PNGZoom Video CommunicationsZoom is a New World Video Platform2016-11-28T19:55:20.768ZZoom is used by the majority of our support staff, and is starting to be used by our field employees. This includes a few hundred offices, involving around 2500 regular users. Its greatest strengths are ease of use, reasonable cost, powerful encoding technology, end-to-end encryption, and one of the richest feature sets of any video conferencing platform. Notable features include cloud recording, support for legacy equipment, on-prem, and cloud, baked-in virtual backgrounds, polling, breakout rooms, whiteboards, file sharing, and best of all, a fully integrated conference room system. We use it for team meetings, recruiting, telehealth, executive meetings, company webcasts, outreach, chat, and one-on-ones.,Features! See above for its rich feature set. It's so easy to onboard users onto the platform because it's easy to get them excited about all the ways Zoom can help them. My users are buying popup greenscreens left and right because they're so excited about Zoom's Virtual Background feature, for instance.
Integration. The best example of which is Zoom's full integration with the Kubi robot. This robot is a tablet mounted on a swiveling stand which can be controlled remotely through Zoom to be able to look all around a room. My company uses it for telehealth purposes, and my team in particular uses the robot for video shoots in which we need a quick and easy remote shot of a crowd or event. We even have someone using Zoom and a Kubi to remotely monitor an empty front desk and greet guests who walk into the building. Few (if any) platforms can boast integration with such pioneering technology.
Price. Zoom is very reasonably priced to be sure. Not only are we saving by using it instead of other, more expensive video platforms--we are saving thousands in other, less measurable fields. Since the inception of Zoom at my company, travel costs have dipped significantly (because most managers and directors are more inclined to use the reliable Zoom platform to communicate, as opposed to traveling between offices). We were also able to almost eliminate several costly teleconferencing services. Ironically, full video meetings with high-quality VoIP audio are significantly cheaper than traditional phone-only teleconferences. Lastly, this may be anecdotal, but there is a perceived increase in productivity since Zoom allows more direct team communication than was previously possible.,While very good for what it is, the Zoom Room solution for conference rooms has some flaws. We have just over 30 of these rooms throughout the company, and issues with connectivity are a bit frequent, and this is likely due to the fact that it uses two consumer devices (a PC or Mac plus an iPad) which require a constant connection for the platform to work. Many may find it easier to support a conference room system involving one mini PC running Zoom (reminder, Zoom is available for Linux on PCs as well as Windows and Mac) and a simple wireless keyboard/mouse to control the meeting, instead of using a Wi-Fi connected tablet.
I would personally like to see even more cross-platform integrations on the part of Zoom. For instance, Facebook Live is a powerful new outreach platform, and would be even more powerful if it could sync up with Zoom. Imagine starting a Facebook Live broadcast through a Zoom Webinar room and reaching hundreds of followers with full video. Virtual Reality is another growing technology. I actually found it possible to stream a virtual reality video through Zoom by using Zoom's Screen Share feature for Android. By mirroring an Android phone running a VR app, I was able to broadcast a 360 video in a standard Zoom room so that other Android and iPhone users could view through Google Cardboard. But this is more of a workaround than a baked-in feature. Something like a "Go VR" button which converted your video to a stereoscopic mode, or that enabled VR streaming through consumer VR cameras like the Ricoh Theta, would be truly amazing through Zoom. (UPDATE Jan 26, 2017: Zoom recently announced support for Facebook Live),10,I'm more involved in the support aspect of Zoom than the financial, but I can say that it represents significant savings, both because it is more reasonably priced than many competitors, and because its ease of use leads, naturally, to reduced travel cost. Its feature set allows companies to condense multiple platforms into one Zoom subscription. Why continue paying for a costly enterprise teleconference account when Zoom has VoIP audio and baked-in teleconferencing?
Reduced support needs is another plus. Supporting Zoom is a breeze compared to supporting other platforms. Having been part of a very small team supporting Zoom companywide for the past two years, I can attest that my job has gotten easier and easier as people quickly got used to the platform. This has allowed me the freedom to take on multiple projects in addition to being the Zoom support grunt. And, it saves the company as less heads are required to scale and support the platform.
Zoom has produced a productivity metric which my company has never previously been able to observe. Because it is the standard for communications throughout the company, we can easily draw up a weekly productivity glance by measuring the amount, duration, and purposes of Zoom meetings. Zoom's reporting features are very good, so this is an easy task every week, and the chiefs love seeing it.,We have over 30 Zoom Rooms throughout the company, with plans for many more. I've previously described some of their flaws. Despite those, the Zoom Rooms system is really great, and they do work 90+% of the time. They recently added great features like ultrasonic detection which allows you to share a laptop screen with, literally, one click. They also now have voice control, allowing one to say "Hey Zoom, start a meeting" to start a meeting. And they recently released an Android controller version (in addition to the existing iOS version), so IT folks reluctant to use iOS no longer have to give in. Camera control through the iPad is another big plus. Plus Zoom continually strengthens baked-in remote support for these rooms, so they keep getting better.
Sticky features like this, and the fact that they're among the cheapest conference room solutions out there, do add value to the platform. But they still have work to do to make them more solid.,Adobe Connect, BlueJeans, Google Hangouts, GoToMeeting, Join.me, Skype for Business and WebEx Meetings,Skype for Business, Slack, IFTTT,,6,Internal video meetings are the currently most important use case, and I'd imagine this is the case for many other companies
Zoom Chat is the most popular company chat platform.
Large Zoom webinars are commonly used for internal and external purposes.
Zoom is widely used throughout the company as a recording platform, for recording screen shares or video as a shareable .mp4.
We have over 30 Zoom Rooms set up throughout the company, with plans for many more.,Virtual Backgrounds are a really innovative baked in feature. No longer do users have to install extra applications like ManyCam or Xsplit--Zoom already includes greenscreen capability.
Zoom's integration with the Kubi robot allows for a wide range of use cases, from remote robotic monitoring of an office to more interactive face to face meetings.
Zoom's sizeable collection of international numbers allows us to set up calls all around the globe.,Attention tracking is a brand new Zoom feature that our marketing people really seem to be excited about. It lets the host know if participants don't have Zoom as the active window (and therefore aren't paying full attention) during webinars.
Zoom will hopefully, in the not too distant future, have support for Virtual and Augmented reality.
Zoom's brand new integration with Facebook Live and YouTube live will really expand our outreach abilities. We're planning many big FB Live videos.,10,Yes,Price
Product Features
Product Usability
Product Reputation
Prior Experience with the Product
Vendor Reputation
Analyst Reports
Third-party Reviews,We would not change our process. We got extremely lucky in picking Zoom early-on. We did our due diligence in evaluating other platforms, and were able to find a diamond in the rough.,Implemented in-house,Yes,Change management was a big part of the implementation and was well-handled,None, it was as smooth as could possibly be expected.,10,Self-taught,I was in charge of learning the platform well enough to train others, and it wasn't difficult at all to learn the features just by using Zoom.,7,Take advantage of Zoom's ability to create separate environments. You can make one where none of Zoom's features are enabled, and one where all of them are.,Some - we have done small customizations to the interface,Some - we have added small pieces of custom code,We have used Arduino microcontrollers to run custom macros to get Zoom to do interesting things. For instance, I used an Arduino Micro with microphone sensors embedded in a table which would auto-detect when someone at a certain seat at the table was speaking. It would then use XSplit to switch the camera to focus on that person. Then if the person adjacent to the first speaker starts speaking, the Arduino triggers XSplit to focus on them. The whole setup cost under $30 since Arduinos and components are cheap and XSplit and Zoom are free. Compare that to something like the PolyCom EagleEye which does the same thing but would cost $15,000 just for the auto-focusing cameras.
I made another one with photoreceptors so that if someone hovers their hand over a receptor, it triggers AutoHotKey scripts to do stuff like start or stop sharing in Zoom, advance a PowerPoint slide, etc. There are tons of possibilities for making custom setups like this.,10,Yes,When they first released Breakout Rooms, it was missing a few key elements to make it a great experience. I outlined ways in which it could improve, and the rep informed me that most of them were already in the works, and that the rest he already took the liberty of adding to their feature list.,Using video. Zoom's technology allows video to perform well even with poor network strength, which greatly reduces confusion and frustration among users. It's very easy to get into a meeting with video.
Zoom's great new features like Polling, Breakout Rooms, and Registration are all easy to use. They're more complex features which do require explanation, but despite their complexity, it's still rather easy to provide training for using these features.
Screen sharing is now easier than ever since Zoom added a Screen Share button to its client home screen. Plus instant share in Zoom Rooms is now possible thanks to ultrasonic detection.,Scheduling meetings might benefit from being simplified. The scheduling popup is a bit more complicated than many expect, and since we use Outlook companywide, it takes an extra step to get an invite to open in Outlook and send it from there. There is a way to schedule so that it goes right to Outlook, but it requires the user to go to "Meetings" first, and then click on a Schedule dropdown and select "Outlook". Nobody knows about this. So, I wish we could configure Zoom so that the Schedule button on the Home Screen automatically goes to Outlook if Outlook is detected.
Difficulties with logging in is probably the most common support call we get. This is because we use Zoom's SSO feature. The feature is just fine, but it's just the nature of the beast that logging in with SSO takes more steps.
Zoom's back end might need some work. For instance, there are advanced user features like Virtual Background, Breakout Rooms, Automatic Recording, etc. Currently, the only way to enable these features for users is by individually clicking through each user and checking each checkbox. So, I've had to write scripts to turn features on or off companywide as they're released. Either that, or we use an intern to do all of the clickwork. Zoom needs a way to turn a feature on or off simultaneously for all users or a group.,Yes,10,10,10,10,Facebook Live
Kubi Robot
Zapier,IFTTT/Zapier--IFTTT integration would be appreciated in addition to Zapier. But besides that, I'm pretty sure there are loads more useful recipes besides just scheduling meetings and adding webinar registrants.
VR--Virtual Reality support and integration with any of the various VR platforms would be a huge selling point for us. Imagine integration with the Ricoh Theta camera or the Daydream headset
Google Home/Alexa/Siri/Cortana--Zoom just got started with Siri support, but if there were scores of phrases to use with voice platforms like this, Zoom would be amazing. Imagine saying "OK Google, invite John Doe and Jane Doe to a meeting".
Augmented Reality--Zoom's Virtual Backdrops feature is great, but it would be a lot of fun if it could overlay customize-able bits of useful information in a video feed.,File import/export,10,Don't be afraid to go to support.zoom.us and submit a feature request.,10,10,There were not any special conditions. However, we are grandfathered into their earlier pricing model, having been early adopters.,Nothing is necessary, they're already very easy to work with.,Yes,The latest update we did happened to be the 4.x update, which has all kinds of improvements like Facebook Live integration, improvements to Breakout rooms, voice integration, multiple screen sharing capabilities, multiple co-hosts, etc
There are always minor process update--Zoom continually improves the flow of their platform
I've heard people say, when other companies release updates, it's like "oh geez, now I have to update again." But when Zoom updates, it's like opening a pile of great presents.,Lots more great new features
Minor updates to improve useability
Possibly changing some UI elements,YesStefan Scherbik
Windows, Linux, Mac
Zoom
755 Ratings
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