In this edition of Washington State University’s (WSU) Zoom newsletter, Information Technology Services (ITS) highlights upcoming Zoom changes, security and privacy requirements, and optional features that can improve the Zoom experience for faculty, staff, and students.
In This Edition
Zoom Interface Update Begins in February
University Requirement for WSU Zoom Users
Beginning in February 2026, WSU will require a new version of Zoom across desktop, web, and mobile apps. The update introduces a refreshed interface that reorganizes navigation and settings for clarity and consistency while preserving existing meeting features and workflows.
WSU Zoom users are encouraged to update Zoom in advance to become familiar with the revised layout before attending or hosting meetings.
Review step‑by‑step guidance for updating the Zoom app you are using: Updating Zoom to the Latest Version
With the new version of Zoom, you can expect:
- A refreshed app design and navigation on desktop, web, and mobile devices
- Cleaner layouts with fewer on-screen distractions
- Customizable toolbars and menus so you control what is visible
- Centralized settings and host controls for quicker access
- The same meeting features and workflows you already use
Following the update, some meeting controls will appear in new locations. These changes streamline the meeting window and make commonly used tools easier to find without altering how meetings function.
Zoom Desktop App
- Simplified Toolbar: Commonly used controls appear directly on the bottom toolbar. Additional options are grouped under the More menu, where tools can be pinned, unpinned, or reordered based on your preferences.
- Unified Settings Panel: Audio, video, and other meeting settings now open in a single right-hand panel instead of separate pop-up windows.
- Centralized Host Controls: For meeting hosts, security settings, waiting room options, and participant permissions are grouped together in one panel on the right side of the meeting window. Because these tools are critical for managing sessions and responding to unexpected issues, WSU recommends placing them prominently on the toolbar.
- Cleaner Meeting Header: The meeting name now appears in the header, with a drop-down menu for quick access to meeting details.
- Updated Chat: The in-meeting chat panel color will match the in-meeting experience and can be adjusted in your display settings as needed.
Zoom Mobile App
- Fixed Bottom Toolbar: Five essential controls remain visible at the bottom of the screen at all times, with no horizontal scrolling required.
- Redesigned More Menu: Features such as Raise Hand, Reactions, Record, Share, and Participants are grouped in a grid-style layout.
- End/Leave Button: This option is now consistently placed on the toolbar alongside other primary controls.
- Simplified Invitations: Updated tools make it easier to invite participants during a meeting.
- Consolidated Meeting Status Bar: The meeting name appears at the top of the screen, along with indicators for features such as recording or AI Companion (when enabled).
- Centralized Settings: Backgrounds, filters, avatars, captions, audio options, and Zoom Room settings are now located in one place.
- Unified Sharing Menu: Screen sharing, file sharing, camera sharing, and whiteboard access are all available from a single menu.
The reorganized navigation within the Zoom desktop app will make frequent actions easier to reach and allow users to tailor the app’s navigation to their preferences.
- New Left-Side Navigation Bar: Navigation moves from the top of the app to a left-hand panel. A small set of tabs appears by default, with additional options collected under the More menu.
- Customizable Navigation: You can pin frequently used tabs, move others into the More menu, reorder items, and switch between collapsed or expanded views.
- New Create (+) Menu: A + (Create) option provides one-click access to start meetings, send messages, create documents, make calls, and more without navigating to a specific tab first.
Several updates to Zoom Team Chat focus on readability, consistency, and easier navigation. These changes will help users manage conversations more efficiently, particularly in active channels or ongoing meetings.
- Simplified Sidebar: Updated spacing allows more tabs to remain visible at once, making conversations easier to scan.
- DMs Renamed to Chats: The DMs tab is now labeled Chats, reflecting a broader range of conversations and more consistent terminology.
- Expanded Tab Visibility: Keep more tabs visible at the same time. This is no longer limited to five tabs.
- Files Tab Retired: The Files tab has been removed. Files shared in chats or channels remain accessible within those spaces and through search.
- Meetings Tab Improvements: Meeting chat names now appear in bold by default, with a Meetings Today filter to help locate active sessions.
- One-Click Pinning: From the More menu, tabs can be temporarily pinned without reorganizing the entire sidebar.
- Hot Seat Update: Open or close the Hot Seat view with a single click, including a dedicated X button for quick dismissal.
Recording and AI Companion Use in Meetings
Expectations for Transparency and Consent
As Zoom expands its tools and functionalities, recording and AI Companion features play an increasing role in collaboration at WSU. Use of these tools carries significant responsibilities related to privacy, consent, and compliance with Washington state law and university policy.
Meeting hosts are expected to:
- Be Intentional: Decide in advance which settings to enable, what content to capture, and who will have access.
- Be Transparent: Announce verbally at the start of any meeting if recording or AI Companion features are enabled.
- Be Accurate: Review all Zoom AI-generated content for accuracy before sharing it with others.
When certain Zoom features are active, visual indicators appear in the meeting window to help participants quickly understand what tools are in use.
- AI Companion: A blinking white star icon appears in the top-right corner of the meeting window.
- Recording: A blinking red dot appears in the top-left corner of the meeting window.
In addition to visual indicators, Zoom provides meeting recording disclaimers to support participant awareness and consent.
Recording disclaimers are enabled by default for guest (non-WSU) participants. Hosts may enable recording disclaimers for all participants to request consent when a meeting recording begins.
If you are unsure whether a meeting is being recorded or whether AI Companion is active, look for these indicators or ask the host for clarification.
Washington state law requires consent from all parties for the recording of private meetings. For other meetings, consent to record should be obtained from all participants unless the meeting is clearly public in nature, particularly when sensitive or confidential matters are discussed.
Consent may be obtained verbally at the start of a meeting or, if enabled, through Zoom recording disclaimers. Participants who do not consent should be given the option to opt out or leave the meeting.
Use of Zoom AI Companion or meeting recordings creates university records that are subject to state and university records retention requirements. These records are public records and may be disclosed in response to a public records request.
Zoom records stored in the cloud, including AI Companion meeting summaries and cloud meeting recordings, are retained for a limited period and then automatically deleted. If records retention requirements require these records to be kept longer, hosts must download and store them in an approved university location.
Learn more about:
Extended Cloud Recording Access for Students
Additional Time to Revisit Recordings
Enrolled undergraduate students now have up to 140 days to retain Zoom cloud recordings, extending the previous 30‑day limit. This change supports longer‑term access to recordings from group work, presentations, interviews, and other collaborative activities.
The following suggestions can help you make effective use of your WSU Zoom cloud recording access:
- Name Recordings Clearly: Use brief, descriptive titles so recordings are easy to identify later, especially for group projects or recurring meetings.
- Download Important Recordings Early: If you need to keep a recording beyond 140 days, download it and store it in an secure location before it is automatically deleted.
- Review Sharing Settings: Check who has access to your recordings and adjust permissions to protect privacy.
- Delete Recordings: Removing unneeded recordings helps keep your account organized and reduces clutter.
Zoom Phone Transition Progress
Project Update
WSU continues its transition to Zoom Phone, integrating the Zoom platform to support phone calls, video meetings, and content sharing from the same desktop and mobile applications.
With adoption progressing across numerous WSU Pullman departments, Zoom Phone optimization is part of a broader effort to modernize the university’s communications solution and reduce legacy, hardware‑based systems. Departments that migrate gain a unified experience for calling and meetings within Zoom, with advanced options tailored to local needs and workflows.
Departments interested in upgrading their telephony systems to Zoom Phone are encouraged to review the available onboarding resources to get started.
Zoom Phone offers advanced features that provide a comprehensive communication solution for diverse university needs:
- Accessible via Apps: Manage meetings, phone calls, and team chat through the Zoom app for Windows, Mac, iOS, and Android devices
- Text Messaging: Send and receive SMS (text messages) using Zoom
- Voicemail: Manage voice messages from any device with voicemail transcription and notification
- Call Transfer: Route calls to the right person anytime, anywhere with supervised and blind transfer capabilities
- Call Forwarding: Redirect calls to internal users and external phone numbers by creating and managing personalized call handling rules
- Call Delegation: Allow individuals to make and receive calls on behalf of supervisors and unit leaders
- Call Recording: Archive and retrieve phone conversations with on-demand recording, transcriptions, and playback
- Call Blocking: Automatically block unwanted calls with personalized call blacklists
- Call Hold: Place calls on hold and retrieve on-hold calls
Zoom Phone offers a flexible, mobile, and powerful cloud phone system.
- Convenience and Flexibility: Zoom Phone is hybrid and remote-work-friendly. By eliminating the need for physical desk phones or hardware, Zoom Phone allows you to manage interactions on any device in which you can download the Zoom app.
- Sustainability and Cost Efficiency: By reducing reliance on physical desk phones, Zoom Phone is an eco-friendly and cost-effective system that improves sustainability and minimizes hardware maintenance costs.
- Integration: Zoom Phone easily integrates with the WSU phone number system, allowing you to keep your current 10-digit number and 5-digit extension. You can also make calls by typing a name into Zoom.
WSU provides a selection of recommended handsets that are fully compatible with the Zoom Phone environment: Approved Poly Zoom Phones
Learn more about WSU’s Zoom Phone offering:
Virtual Backgrounds
New WSU‑Themed Options Available
Virtual backgrounds for your Zoom meetings now include a new collection of WSU‑themed images featuring photos from the 2025 Fall Administrative Professional Advisory Council (APAC) Photo Contest. These images, captured and selected by Administrative Professionals across the WSU system, offer an additional way to represent the university community during meetings.
The collection builds on the existing set of WSU‑branded backgrounds and offers a variety of seasonal and campus‑inspired scenes.
Learn more about changing your virtual background image.
Northern Lights Near Kamiak Butte
Red Barn on White
Moon Behind Brian Hall
Rainbow Behind Field Art
Optional Sync with Microsoft
Aligning Calendars, Contacts, and Availability
Zoom now offers improved integration with Microsoft applications such as Outlook and Teams. For users who regularly work across both platforms, this sync features can help keep calendars, contacts, and presence information better aligned.
Outlook
For a unified calendar and contacts experience, you can sync information from Outlook to Zoom to align your schedule, meetings, and contacts across the two services. This helps ensure that you can easily manage meetings, availability, and communications with one consistent workflow.
Teams
If you utilize Teams and Zoom, presence status synchronization helps colleagues and peers see when you are available, busy, or in a meeting. This shared visibility can reduce missed messages, minimize interruptions, and make collaboration smoother.
Review step‑by‑step guidance for syncing select Microsoft features with Zoom: How to Sync Your WSU Microsoft Details with Zoom
This integration is optional, and no action is required if you prefer to keep your current setup.
AI Companion Meeting Summary Templates
Structured Summaries for Different Meeting Needs
Meeting summary templates generated by Zoom AI Companion offer flexible formats for capturing key points, decisions, and next steps. Templates are optional and user‑controlled, allowing summaries to reflect the purpose, tone, and structure of your different meetings.
With formats for planning, decision-making, or information sharing, templates support clearer communication for you and meeting participants.
- Purpose-Driven Formats: Choose summary structures that align with different meeting types.
- Clear Organization: Key points, decisions, and next steps are grouped in predictable sections, making summaries easier to scan and revisit.
- Consistent Summaries: Using templates helps create a shared structure that supports clarity and continuity over time.
- Optional and User-Controlled: Templates are not enabled by default. You decide whether to use them and how your meeting content is summarized.
With meeting summary templates, you can:
- Reference past information.
- Highlight key points or follow-up questions.
- Summarize goals and timelines.
- Capture action items and next steps.
- Track assignments for participants.
Example use cases include lectures, team or project meetings, class discussions, study groups, interviews, and similar conversations.
Translated Captions
Supporting Multilingual Participation
Translated captions allow meeting participants to view real‑time captions in another language, supporting accessibility and inclusion in multilingual settings. Hosts can make caption languages available in advance, and participants may enable captions individually during meetings.
A special WSU Zoom license is required to enable translated captions: Request a Zoom Translated Captions License
Captions can be translated between most of the following languages:
- Arabic
- Bengali
- Cantonese
- Chinese (Traditional)
- Chinese (Simplified)
- Czech
- Danish
- Dutch
- English
- Estonian
- Finnish
- French (Canada)
- French (France)
- German
- Hebrew
- Hindi
- Hungarian
- Indonesian
- Italian
- Japanese
- Korean
- Malay
- Persian
- Polish
- Portuguese
- Romanian
- Russian
- Spanish
- Swedish
- Tagalog
- Tamil
- Telugu
- Thai
- Turkish
- Ukrainian
- Vietnamese
Dialects of one another are not currently supported for translation, such as translating between French (France) and French (Canada).
The following languages are supported when translating from one of the fully supported languages above, but cannot be the source language, as they are not yet supported for automated captions:
- Greek
- Norwegian
- Welsh
The option to enable translated captions becomes available after a special license is granted by the WSU Unified Communications team: Request a Zoom Translated Captions License
Meeting Hosts
Hosts can enable captions before starting a meeting: Enable Translated Captions as a Zoom User
Participants
Each participant can enable captions individually without relying on the host: View Captions in Another Language
Zoom Hub
A Centralized Space for Zoom Content
Zoom Hub brings together Zoom documents, whiteboards, recordings, clips, and meeting summaries in a single location. With a user-friendly dashboard and a folder-focused organizational structure, Hub can reduce time spent searching for content and support quick access to recent or shared materials.
Hub allows you to select any file and generate automatic AI summaries, answers, and analyses. With simple and quick access to AI-generated insights, you can elevate understanding for your Zoom content and improve your decision-making or meeting prep processes. With the AI functionality in Hub, you can also create new Zoom assets in seconds.
Review step‑by‑step guidance for accessing and navigating Hub in Zoom: Getting Started with Zoom Hub
Clinical Notes for Healthcare Professionals
Automated Documentation During Patient Visits
Zoom Workplace for Clinicians supports clinical note‑taking during virtual and in‑person patient interactions. The service is designed with privacy, security, and regulatory requirements in mind, allowing healthcare professionals to focus more fully on patient care.
Zoom Workplace for Clinicians is an add-on license that is now available for purchase by WSU departments on behalf of WSU users. This is an optional service upgrade that departments may choose to purchase for WSU users in their areas.
A paid Zoom add-on license is required to enable Clinical Notes features: Email the WSU Unified Communications Team
Requests for this paid add-on license must be submitted at the department level. WSU users interested in this paid service are encouraged to connect with their department to initiate a request.
Zoom Workplace for Clinicians protects patients and healthcare professionals in the following ways:
- HIPAA Compliant: Zoom enables Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) compliance to meet HIPAA security rule requirements.
- BAA Enabled: Zoom ensures a Business Associate Agreement (BAA) is in place to secure the handling of patient data.
- AI Data Privacy: Zoom does not use this data to train its AI models or third-party AI models.
Using AI, Zoom Workplace for Clinicians can make clinical note-taking faster and easier to manage during all of your patient encounters.
- Familiar Interface: Access to the familiar, easy-to-use Zoom interface for all clinicians to adopt.
- Extensive Feature Compatibility: Leverage all standard Zoom platform tools such as meetings, Team Chat, phone, mail, whiteboard, notes and more.
- Dedicated Tools: Access a unique Clinical Note view, editing tools, and Clinical Note button.
- Stop/Pause Capabilities: Quickly start, pause, or stop notes during any meeting.
- Adaptable to Visit Types: Multiple visit types are supported, including telehealth (virtual meetings) and in-person (ambient meetings).
- Integration with EHRs: Automatically generate notes that integrate with Electronic Health Records (EHRs).
Review additional guidance regarding access to clinical notes capabilities: Zoom Workplace for Clinicians
Review step‑by‑step guidance for capturing clinical notes in Zoom after gaining access: Capturing Clinical Notes in Zoom
Support Article Reorganization
Improved Access to Zoom Resources
The Zoom self‑help articles in the WSU Knowledge Base are now reorganized to make it easier to find reliable answers when you need them. Whether you are troubleshooting after hours, preparing for an important meeting, or exploring new features, the updated structure ensures Zoom support resources at WSU are easy to reference and navigate.
The WSU Unified Communications team continues to review and refine these support resources to best reflect how Zoom is used across the university and keep all content current.
Friendly Reminders
Quarterly Zoom Version Updates
Mandatory Zoom updates are scheduled every quarter, with the next version update expected in February 2026.
Meeting Security Requirements
WSU requires all Zoom meetings to be secured with a passcode, waiting room, or required authentication to join the meeting.
Zoom Cloud Recording Retention
Meeting recordings are retained in the Zoom web portal for 365 days for WSU staff and 425 days for Video Conference (VC) instructors.
Meeting ID and Link Expiration
Expiration rules for different Zoom meeting types may cause an invalid meeting ID error to appear and may prevent you from starting your meetings on time.
Free Webinar and Event Licensing
WSU offers Zoom Webinar and Zoom Events licenses at no cost to faculty and staff to help you coordinate and manage sessions of all sizes and occurrences.
Free Digital Signage Tools
Create and share custom, visual multimedia displays in Zoom Rooms and other on-campus spaces via display devices using Zoom’s versatile digital signage capabilities.
Questions?
Explore the WSU Knowledge Base for additional instructional Zoom guides covering WSU Zoom account access, meeting controls and settings, privacy and security options, and much more.
Please direct questions to the WSU Unified Communications team via email at zoom.support@wsu.edu or online.
Meet the Team
Travis Williams
Manager, UC Infrastructure and Support
Given my role at WSU, I cultivate a team with expertise and leadership in Unified Communications delivery and management. My team represents WSU’s distance education and collaborative communication interests. We strive to conduct outstanding support for the WSU community, providing tools and transparent reporting to technical teams across the institution. My goal is for stakeholders who engage my team to have a positive outcome, and also to feel confident the service they rely upon is in the best hands possible.
Brandon Henry
Unified Communications Specialist
As a Unified Communications specialist, my role is to provide technical support and training to Washington State University Zoom users. I enjoy serving WSU customers because it allows me to help create meaningful connections and facilitate seamless virtual interactions, ultimately improving the user experience and achieving the goal of enhancing collaboration and communication within the WSU community.
Casey O’Leary
Unified Communications Specialist
As a graduate of WSU myself, I have always enjoyed my experience within the WSU community. Previously, this was as a student and sports fan, but now I’m able to contribute in a professional manner by providing technical support, training, and administration of Unified Communications services across WSU. My goal is to provide the highest level of service within my capacity in ITS, so that we can continue to grow and progress the overall WSU community.