Zoom introduces Zoom Docs for Zoom Workplace customers. The solution is different from Google Docs and Microsoft Word, but not completely.

Zoom is bringing Zoom Docs to the world, or at least to its Zoom Workplace customers. Docs was announced late last year as a new way to collaborate that integrates with both the overarching Zoom platform and third-party applications.

Collaboration Canvas

Zoom sees Docs as an evolution of document suites and wants to differentiate itself from Google Sheets and especially Microsoft Office. Think of Zoom Docs less as a tool you use to create a specific document and more as a place where you turn written information into what you need using AI. The solution runs in the cloud.

In Zoom Docs, you work on a canvas with blocks. These can contain just text, but also images, tables, checklists, videos and graphics. You can integrate data from Zoom Whiteboard, but also Google Drive, Figma, X and YouTube.

In Docs, for example, you can summarize a meeting and highlight action points, develop a report or proposal together with colleagues, or plan a large project. With this approach, Zoom Docs is more similar to the relatively unknown Microsoft Loop.

AI included

The Zoom Companion is central to the solution and can help you (partly in Dutch) with most tasks. For example, the AI ​​summarizes a meeting, generates content such as an email based on transcripts, and revises or summarizes existing texts.

Zoom also sees its Docs solution as a central place to collect company information in a kind of wiki. With this approach, you can compare the tool to SharePoint.

The different aspects of Zoom Docs can be found in existing solutions, but Zoom believes it has a unique advantage by combining them in its own way, along with integration with the Zoom platform and the presence of Companion AI at no additional cost.

Price is certainly one factor that Zoom wants to compete on. A standard Pro subscription to Workplace, tailored to an SMB, costs €12.99 per month per year. This includes not only Workplace with Docs, but also more classic Zoom features, as well as email and calendar. Zoom hopes that this price will allow it to carve out a place for itself within the enterprise, perhaps not instead of, but in addition to existing platforms.