With over 300 million daily meeting participants, Zoom is certainly one of the most widely-used video conferencing applications available right now. It’s also a popular choice for Event Organizers hosting live virtual events - and it’s not hard to see why. As part of their commitment to making video communications frictionless, they’ve just rolled out tons of new features and fixes.

The new features come hot on the heels of last month’s updates aimed at improving the accessibility of its platform. This included the ability to drag and drop the video windows around in Zoom's Gallery View, and the choice to pin the one to be the main window. This meant that the main window would no longer change based on who is speaking at the time. In addition, Zoom enhanced its keyboard shortcuts and streamlined its screen reader interface to facilitate logging in without a mouse. Furthermore, Zoom now allows users to adjust the size of closed captioning text and specify screen reader alerts.

Keep reading for a run through of the updates that may have the most impact on your next virtual event.

Zoom Meeting/ Webinar features

Pre-event:

Addition of Security button in the host's meeting toolbar: This allows the host to enable/ disable options during a meeting to minimize disruption.
Phone audio options for Webinar attendees: Zoom has expanded its ‘join by phone’ options so webinar attendees can attend events if they’re experiencing speaker issues on their laptops, or cannot connect to a Wi-Fi or data network.
Access to Italian and Vietnamese language support

During the event:

Notification to watch live stream if a webinar is full: Attendees will now be notified that they can watch the livestream of your event if you set up streaming to Facebook, Workplace, YouTube Live or a custom stream of your choice.
Additional meeting reactions
Roll-up Closed Captioning
Custom languages for language interpretation
Participants now able to self-select Breakout Room: This feature is useful if your attendees join the event as a group, or company.
Allow Host to unmute participants using pre-approved consent
Option to delete questions
Report a user during a meeting
Multi-pin and multi-spotlight, including ability to spotlight Self when speaking: With this feature, you can adjust the layout of your screen when having multiple speakers during a panel discussion.
Custom gallery view organization, with display of up to 49 participants per screen: Customize your screen’s layout to have an overview of multiple speakers, or multiple attendees (for example if you want to pick up on questions quickly during a Q&A).
Save a Multi-page Whiteboard
Share files with Microsoft SharePoint
Share PowerPoint or Keynote as Virtual Background in Beta: Useful if your speaker wants to be visible while sharing a presentation.

Post-event:

Additional feedback options at the end of a meeting: Great for collecting attendee and speaker feedback.
Enhancements to meeting end/leave flow
New chat functions:
Mark as “Unread” for images and files
Record and send a voice message
Manage posting permissions
Re-enable clickable links in meeting chat
Re-enable third-party file sharing: This feature can be used if you or your speakers want to share any files exclusively with your live attendees.

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