Growing into the largest video conferencing tool during the pandemic, Zoom is establishing its stronghold in the workplace by introducing two new tools: Zoom email (Zmail) and Zoom calendar (Zcal).

The offerings were announced at its Zoomtopia customer conference, a two-day event which took place in San Jose, California. 

There, company founder and CEO Eric Yuan explained that he realized how much time people spent on Zoom, and so wanted to provide all the tools they needed to do that without task switching. 

Although customers can download a new client to use their email and calendar, Zoom CEO explained that although they can “connect to a GMail or Microsoft Outlook account or server if they wish […] on the server side, it could still be a Google or Microsoft integration for existing Google and Microsoft customers.”

His expectations for the new hosted services, however, which give users the ability to create a unique customer domain and set up end-to-end encryption, seem to still be regulated, as he revealed that although longtime Google and Microsoft email and calendar customers may still choose to use the clients with the back-end integration, small business owners, who might not have formal IT teams, may choose to let Zoom manage both the client and server side.

Unlike Gmail, Zoom will be more like a private platform with a small group of people sharing email, which is expected to cut down significantly on junk and unwanted emails.

The service will be free for both paid and free tier Zoom customers who are connecting to Gmail or Microsoft Outlook, and available as part of the Zoom One Pro or higher subscription plans at no additional cost.

The company is also rolling out Zoom Spots, a feature like Slack Huddles where users can drop in and have spontaneous conversations.

CEO Eric Yuan explains: “We are introducing a new service called Zoom Spots, which is essentially a persistent video where you can look around, see who’s there and you can join these conversations and you don’t have to schedule meetings. And it’s a pretty interesting concept to support hybrid work.”

Other services include a customer service chat bot, which is likely linked to its opportune Solvvy acquisition last May, and a new sales intelligence tool to its Zoom IQ for Sales toolkit, which simulates various sales situations to coach sales teams virtually.