Zoom app: kudos!

[vzanini]

I want to say thank you for enabling Apps inside Zoom. This is a super useful feature!

I do online training with groups of 25-30 people at a time. I use Miro as a whiteboard tool and I have always asked individual people to open Miro in their own browser. This forces them to have 2 windows open - Zoom and Miro - and often they are on a laptop, making it difficult to see both windows.

Since I enabled the Miro app inside Zoom, they can see the whiteboard within Zoom, and only need 1 window.

I also appreciate that the Miro app stays open as the participants move into a breakout room for some activities, and come back to the main room. The app is activated once, and they continue to collaborate on it throughout the entire session.

There are a few limitations that I hope can be addressed in the future:

- the app only works if people have the zoom app installed, not in a browser

- for the host, if I jump into a breakout room, the app is disabled.  I need to re-enable the app in the breakout room, but this also resets the app for the participants there. So jumping from one room to another is no longer practical if I want them to use the Miro app.

- for the host, if I share my screen, the app is disabled. I need to re-enable it for the participants. I may want to do a quick screen share for maybe a webpage or a document I'd like them to see, and then close the screenshare. But when I close it, the app is gone.

- For the host, the apps panel is on the right. When I start an app it shows on the right. When I click "collaborate" to share it with everyone else, it moves to the left. This is distracting... is it needed?

- For the host, the apps panel is busy and confusing.

- There could be an option to enable/disable the apps in the breakout rooms, or select which apps are available there.

I haven't tried a multi-app setup where I have more than one app active at a time. I feel that first I need to make the one-app setup work well, before I go to the next level. I'm afraid that in a multi-app setup the issues above may be compounded, and I may not have easy access or visibility into what app the participants see or have access to.

Thanks for listening to these suggestions, and keep up the good work! The idea of integrating apps inside Zoom is awesome!

[bstrelko]

On the subject of Miro - have you tried Zoom Whiteboard? It has nearly 100% feature parity (plus a few features that are even sleeker) with Miro and is integrated with Zoom even more seamlessly than an app.

[vzanini]

Thanks for sharing. 

I will try the Zoom whiteboard. It looks interesting.

One major obstacle is that I've built all of my content and templates in Miro, and manually porting all of that to Zoom would be painful. Unless there is a way to do export/import somehow between the two systems....

Also, I wonder if Zoom whiteboard allows to manage boards in "folders" and to grant access permissions to individual people ---- even when not in a Zoom session (e.g. I'd like to start collaborating during a Zoom session, and then I'd like individual people to keep working on the same board outside of the Zoom session)

[bstrelko]

Regarding import/export, Zoom now has a Miro migration tool (I have not tried this yet and cannot share feedback) - more info here: https://support.zoom.com/hc/en/article?id=zm_kb&sysparm_article=KB0076258

The 'folder' functionality you're looking for is best accomplished using Zoom Whiteboard's 'projects' hierarchy. This will allow you to move specific whiteboards to projects with access designated at the project-level.

And yes, everyone can absolutely work on these whiteboards outside of meetings (async).

Hope this helps!

[vzanini]

Interesting. I'll check it out.

Thanks for sharing!