Zoom Phone Overview

The university uses Zoom for its video telephony and remote meetings. In addition, we now use the same application for telecommunications.

What is a Zoom Phone?

Zoom is a unified communication and collaboration platform. This means in addition to videoconference meetings and chat, it can also be the phone system for an entire business. At its heart, the technology allows us to use the existing Zoom application we've used for years to make video calls to also send and receive phone calls. It’s a “softphone,” or a phone that runs in software on your operating system.

In order to do this, the Zoom application also includes the ability to: 

  • receive a phone call made to your existing phone extension
  • dial a standard number from your phone extension
  • check voicemail for that extension.

Zoom allows you to do this while logged in with your CSUMB account on a computer that already has the Zoom application installed.

Do I need any special equipment?

At a minimum, you need the Zoom desktop application installed on your operating system (i.e. desktop, laptop, or smartphone) and a connection to the Internet. If you don't have the Zoom desktop application installed, you can download it directly from Zoom. If you run into issues with the installation, please submit an IT service ticket to install it- Zoom phone will not work in the web app.

There is hardware that works directly with Zoom when connected to your desktop or laptop.

And you use that hardware in the office but can still send/receive calls when you leave if you have a cell phone with the Zoom app installed or a laptop with Zoom Desktop installed.

Additional help

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