Zoom debuts AI features for business workflows across apps

Zoom has introduced new agentic AI features designed to enable users to manage tasks and collaborate across multiple business applications directly from the Zoom platform.

The updates centre around Zoom's Custom AI Companion add-on, which now offers connectivity to 16 prominent third-party applications. Among these integrations are tools such as ServiceNow, Jira, Salesforce, Asana, and Box, allowing users to produce meeting summaries, assign tasks, and update customer relationship management records without leaving the Zoom environment.

With the Custom AI Companion add-on, users can link services including Amazon Q, Glean, and Jira, facilitating indexing, enterprise search, and ticketing functions within the Zoom interface. The addition of further applications aims to offer contextually rich answers and improve workflow orchestration by leveraging intelligent application management.

Expanded capabilities

Besides the expanded application connections, the add-on is now available for purchase online, extending its functionality to small and medium businesses, freelancers, and individual consultants. The Custom AI Companion now supports meeting summary capabilities for a range of video conferencing platforms, including Google Meet and Microsoft Teams, with Cisco Webex support expected in the future. This development means that professionals often reliant on multiple conferencing platforms can centralise their meeting notes and action items more effectively.

Describing the new features, Smita Hashim, Chief Product Officer at Zoom, said:

"With Zoom AI Companion's agentic skills, users will see a significant productivity boost to help them get more done - not just in Zoom, but across business-essential apps like ServiceNow, Jira, Asana, Box, and more. The Custom AI Companion add-on empowers users to streamline their workflows by having AI Companion join their Zoom Meetings and in-person meetings, and can now access AI Companion across other video conferencing platforms."

For sales and service teams, connecting Zoom AI Companion with ServiceNow, Zendesk, and other platforms is intended to simplify the process of updating records, tracking opportunities, and resolving support tickets in real-time. The AI-driven integration can reduce manual effort and help improve customer interactions by keeping sales pipelines and service logs up to date without leaving Zoom.

When linked with platforms such as Microsoft OneDrive, Google Drive, Box, Confluence, Notion, or Coda, AI Companion provides users with secure, in-meeting document access. The system can generate new documents, update existing ones via simple user prompts, or summarise content to assist ongoing discussions. Some document capabilities will be enabled after launch, with additional updates planned.

Workflows and productivity

AI Companion's integration with Asana and Jira supports streamlined project management. Users can directly query and instruct project management tools to update statuses, assign tasks, or set deadlines, reducing the need to switch between applications. The platform also helps manage communications in third-party messaging apps and supports workflows for recruiters and HR professionals, such as candidate profile searches and onboarding tasks when connected to Workday.

For small businesses and freelancers, the online availability of the Custom AI Companion add-on provides broader access to automation across meetings and communications. It supports automatic generation of meeting summaries for non-Zoom meetings, helps educators provide lecture summaries and personalised study videos through custom avatars, and enables sales professionals to automatically update CRM data.

Additional features include the ability for AI Companion to join meetings as a delegate, transcribing and summarising content or generating action items. The add-on provides 11 customisable templates for meeting summaries and allows integration with knowledge sources such as Google Drive while respecting organisation-level permissions.

The Custom AI Companion add-on is available at a cost of USD $12 per user per month, in addition to paid Zoom Workplace plans.

User experience enhancements

Zoom has also released enhancements to its core AI Companion for all paid Zoom Workplace licences at no additional charge. The updates include simplified onboarding, smarter agenda creation supported by past meetings or Zoom Docs, and deeper insights via real-time call queries. Users can interact with AI Companion before, during, and after Zoom Phone calls to review main discussion points or priorities, retrieve earlier conversations, and draft follow-up communications.

AI Companion can summarise documents shared in Zoom Team Chat, capture notes from in-person meetings using a built-in voice recorder, and generate transcripts and action items for further review. Meeting hosts and participants now have streamlined access to meeting summaries, transcripts, and recordings through calendar integration, with improved sharing options arriving soon for Microsoft Teams and other platforms.

Collaboration tools

Zoom Docs now allows users to track edits with detailed formatting indicators and publish documents as public webpages. New video editing capabilities enable users to merge multiple Zoom Clips into a single video, preview edits, and preserve the original files for further use.

Zoom states that these expanded AI-driven features and integration options are intended to strengthen productivity and collaboration across its platform and help users coordinate their work across apps and environments.