With many companies using Zoom as a primary way to connect remote workers over the past 18+ months, company meetings, strategy sessions, project discussions, and more moved to the videoconferencing platform — and so did a large chunk of business data and content. Organizations that have invested lots of money in other collaboration tools suddenly found themselves concerned with their ability to monitor, preserve, and access the data in Zoom for workflow, security, troubleshooting, or marketing purposes.

While Zoom has long offered integrations with hundreds of different tools that connect the services in various ways, such as by allowing you to launch a Zoom meeting from within another app, the company recently launched Zoom Apps, which bring certain aspects of other apps and services into Zoom meetings. It’s a bit confusing, especially when you visit the Zoom App Marketplace and find “Zoom Apps” listed as a category alongside more typical categories such as Analytics, Collaboration, and Productivity.

We set out to find the most useful types of apps in the Zoom App Marketplace for enhancing and extending Zoom. Rather than worry about whether something is a “Zoom App” or a Zoom integration with another app, we chose to highlight the different tools that can help create a better video meeting experience or allow companies to track, analyze, and secure data from Zoom video calls and chat sessions.

We created our own categories below based on our insights, but there is some overlap among them — for instance, some collaboration apps include recording and transcription elements. The following are not necessarily endorsements of specific apps, but rather examples that highlight the different types of apps available within a few key business categories. There are hundreds of additional apps that you can find via the App Marketplace.

When researching apps, keep in mind that many of them require specific user roles (such as account admin) and account types in Zoom, while others allow regular users to install them. Within each app description is a list of installation requirements (including which version of Zoom is required), app permissions and scope, and support resources from each developer. Before you install any app, make sure the permissions it requests don’t violate your company’s privacy policies.

The developer resources for each app include a documentation page with instructions for installing and using the app. In most cases, you’ll be required to set up an account (or sign in to an existing account) with the service you’re connecting to Zoom.

Many different collaboration apps allow hooks into Zoom, letting you launch a Zoom call or create a Zoom link from within that application instead of having to switch over to Zoom. Apps that do this include Google Workspace, Gmail, Microsoft Teams, LinkedIn Video Meetings, Zendesk by Zoom, Spark, and more. The Slack app lets you start Zoom meetings right in a Slack channel or group message, and share the meeting recording there afterward. Chances are good that if you are using a collaboration app, there’s a Zoom integration that goes along with it.

Many productivity and collaboration apps tie in with Zoom more deeply, and others improve the meeting experience itself, as demonstrated by these examples:

Apps like Mentimeter let you use live polls and other interactive elements to engage meeting attendees. (Click image to enlarge it.)

With more meetings happening over video than in person these days, it’s more important than ever to create a permanent record of what was said. While Zoom’s business and enterprise plans include basic meeting recording and transcription capabilities, advanced tools can be integrated into Zoom. Examples include:

Grain for Zoom lets you transcribe, highlight, and share important moments from a video meeting. (Click image to enlarge it.)

These apps help teams collaborate around data and provide trends to spur data-driven decisions. Zoom apps in this category give organizations insights on how Zoom is being used across the enterprise, and can connect with other analytics sites and data. Examples include:

Domo tracks Zoom activity across an organization to help companies understand usage patterns and maximize their Zoom investment. (Click image to enlarge it.)

Several different security apps can help track Zoom calls in order to provide transparency into data and systems, especially for industries that require regulatory compliance and governance. In addition, a number of Zoom integrations help IT with user support, licensing, and other administrative duties.

Aternity’s user experience monitoring app can help support staff troubleshoot Zoom problems. (Click image to enlarge it.)

Zoom also features apps geared to specific work functions, such as sales and CRM tools that monitor and record calls and integrate with apps such as Salesforce; event management apps to monitor, record, and analyze webinars produced via Zoom; finance apps that allow financial firms to record, monitor, and store earnings calls and investor meetings, or even integrate payment for video services; customer service apps that help companies manage support tickets and customer interactions that occur over Zoom; healthcare apps for medical professionals to conduct telehealth calls that can be monitored and recorded; and education apps that coordinate and monitor school-related Zoom activity for remote learning.

Finally, it might be worth exploring a few games and other light apps that could provide an icebreaker before or after a meeting or help break up the monotony of “yet another Zoom call.” For example, the Pexels - Virtual Backgrounds app integrates with the Pexels royalty-free image site, allowing you to choose from more than 3 million photos to use as virtual backgrounds in Zoom calls. There are professional workspaces, stunning landscapes, quirky art pieces, famous landmarks, and more, letting you select just the right background for any meeting.

Smarten up or liven up your background with one of more than 3 million royalty-free photos from Pexels. (Click image to enlarge it.)