Zoom enhances Team Chat to streamline collaboration

Zoom Communications has made a significant redesign to the sidebar of its Team Chat platform, with the intention of offering users a more customisable and efficient workspace.

At its Zoomtopia event in late 2024, the company made a number of strategic moves as it continued its pivot from being a mere collaboration technology provider, dropping the word “video” from its corporate title, and transitioning into an artificial intelligence (AI)-first work platform.

At the time, the company stressed how AI would be the key to opening the door of prosperity, with a range of offerings with capabilities designed to boost productivity, streamline communications and enhance user experience.

The new sidebar is designed to allow users to organise chats, channels and apps according to needs, with features such as drag-and-drop tab arrangement, advanced sorting and filtering that helps users manage their time, collaborate effectively and improve productivity in everyday tasks.

AI enhancements for Team Chat embedded within the upgrade are intended to enable users to navigate and customise the sidebar to make the most out of chat. Users are provided with options to tailor their chat interface by reordering and pinning tabs so they are easily accessible, as well as customised notifications for each tab.

Key Team Chat sidebar enhancements include a more intuitive layout, the ability to quickly find relevant chats, get a list of action items from a conversation within a channel, and declutter chat notifications by customising badging and notifications.

Additionally, Zoom Team Chat now supports code blocks and in-line code, helping to optimise workflows with the ability to format and share code within chat messages. With in-line code, users can highlight snippets within text, making them visually distinct to avoid mixing with other shared messages.

Zoom Team Chat is part of Zoom Workplace, which includes AI Companion at no additional cost for eligible paid users. Zoom believes that productivity can be increased with AI Companion, included at no additional cost with the paid services in Zoom accounts, allowing users to compose chat messages, take quick actions and generate chat thread summaries.

Users can discuss topics before, during and after the meeting with continuous meeting chat. They can share an AI Companion meeting summary in Team Chat, then follow up directly within the chat on action items. External collaboration is possible by chatting with outside contacts, providing the flexibility to communicate seamlessly across different projects.

Commenting on the new enhancements and what it can deliver, Zoom chief product officer Smita Hashim said: “We’re all looking for ways to optimise how we work in the new year, and catching up on chats can be overwhelming. With Zoom Team Chat, you can do cross-product work and be more productive.

“Our new sidebar design takes this to the next level by empowering users to collaborate smarter and customise their workspace to fit their preferred workflow. With AI Companion, user can triage and track their messages more easily, saving time and allowing them to focus on what matters most.”