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Direct Share With Zoom Rooms

By: Richard Mitchell

Let’s face it… wirelessly sharing content can be a pain. Even in very basic AV setup such as an Apple TV, you need to know the name of the Apple TV (which sometimes is named very differently from the room you are in), you join, and are then asked to enter a passcode. Sure, it’s only a minute or so, assuming you’re familiar with the setup, but it’s time spent not focusing on your presentation.

“One touch” connection solutions are available from a number of vendors, but they usually require downloading special software to enable that feature, or that the “one touch” is only one touch after an extensive setup. Why can’t it just be built into the core application? Why does it need to be so difficult?

Surprise, Zoom Rooms has that feature built in. Basically, you enter the physical room, open the Zoom app, press “Share screen” and presto, you’ve connected to the Zoom Room and sharing content in seconds. It’s that easy. No need to enter a ten digit code or find the Zoom Room in AirPlay… it just works.

This is really intended if you simply want to share your screen as you will lose some of Zoom’s more advanced functionality when in “quick connect” mode. For example, when you use “Share screen” you lose the ability to annotate, pause the share, or select only specific applications to share. That said, when additional functionality was needed (say I wanted to add a remote participant or use more advanced features) I could simply invite myself to the Zoom Room and Zoom handled the transition gracefully.

It’s the little things that will drive user adoption, and this is a nice feature.

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