Blog from November, 2024

ITS is excited to announce that Google Docs has introduced a new Document Tabs feature to enhance your productivity and streamline your workflow! The new Document Tabs feature in Google Docs, accessible from the left panel, offers powerful tools to improve your document management and navigation.

Why this Matters: 

  • Improved Productivity: Quickly switch between documents or sections without losing focus. 

  • Better Organization: Keep related documents grouped together for easy access. 

  • Streamline Collaboration: When working with a team, easily manage and navigate through shared documents. 

Get Started:

  • Open your main document in Google Docs.

  • Use the “+” icon on the left panel to open additional documents or create new ones.

  • Click on any tab in the left panel to switch between documents instantly.

Experience a more organized and efficient way to work with your documents using the new Documents Tabs feature in Google Docs!

ITS would like to share some information with employees about Zoom's AI Companion, which is available to all licensed NCSSM Zoom users. This tool offers quite a bit of functionality for summarizing meetings, among other functionality, but it's important to understand both its capabilities and limitations.

What is Zoom AI Companion?

Zoom AI Companion is an AI-powered assistant that can generate meeting summaries, creating highlights and suggesting action items from those meetings. Right now for NCSSM, the AI Companion functionality in Zoom is opt-in, and must therefore be enabled in your Zoom user account settings for the functionality to appear in Zoom.

How to access AI Companion:

Enabling in settings:

  1. Sign into your Zoom account at http://ncssm.zoom.us using your NCSSM Google account

  2. Select Settings on the left-hand side

  3. Navigate to the AI Companion tab

  4. Toggle features on/off according to your preferences:

    • The meeting summary functionality is enabled using the on/off toggle for Meeting summary with AI Companion

    • You may also choose to enable Smart recording with AI Companion to add highlights, summaries, and other information to your recordings. Note: because our Zoom cloud recordings are automatically uploaded to Panopto and then deleted, this functionality will be of limited benefit at this time

Enabling in a meeting using the AI Companion button:

  1. With your meeting running, click the new AI Companion button in the toolbar

  2. Select, according to your preference, who should receive a summary following the meeting

If you enabled Smart recording, with your meeting running, click the Record button and select Record to the cloud to enable AI Companion.

Important data and privacy information:

  • Your meeting recordings and summaries are not used to train Zoom's AI models

  • AI features only work on new meetings after enabled, and only when specifically enabled for those meetings

  • Zoom’s AI Companion meeting summaries will be automatically deleted after 30 days

    • Should you need to retain these generated meeting summaries, we recommend copying and pasting the information into a Google Doc

  • Please note that any institutional data displayed in a summary or recorded in a Zoom meeting is subject to the same data governance classifications as that of any saved meeting recordings, notes, or other such information, and should not be shared with others who lack the necessary business use case or permissions for access.

Administrative Control:

  • ITS can control AI Companion settings for groups of Zoom users as needed

  • Individual users can opt out of the AI Companion features at any time

  • A note that AI Companion features can be disabled (after being enabled) and these assets can be deleted

Additional Resources:

If you have questions, concerns, or need assistance configuring AI Companion, please contact ITS by ticket at http://ithelp.ncssm.edu or by email at ithelp@ncssm.edu.

Thanks, 

~ Justin