Streamline design and product development with Figma’s must-have app for Zoom Meetings

Having a creative idea is one thing. Working together across locations and time zones to design and build something great is another. In today's hybrid work environment, having a flexible, simple-to-use design and collaboration platform that integrates into your existing workflows is critical.

Figma is a great example of a solution that checks those boxes and more, enabling designers, developers, and stakeholders to view, understand, and contribute to projects in real time. Founded in 2011, Figma's platform is trusted today by leading organizations like Atlassian, Uber, Shopify, Oracle, and Salesforce. After a successful beta phase, Figma is officially releasing its native design and collaboration app for Zoom. You can now easily replace manual screen sharing during Zoom meetings with real-time, interactive collaboration in Figma design files or a FigJam whiteboard.

"Our Zoom app places interactivity upfront," says Alex Mullans, Product Manager for Extensibility and Integrations at Figma. "It provides a seamless meeting experience where folks don't have to juggle multiple windows, search for files, or find a link from the chat."

An elegant solution for an everyday problem

In the past, collaborating on a Figma file during a Zoom Meeting meant one person would share their screen, and others would open Figma in a separate window, essentially seeing two versions of their file: one they could interact with, and one they couldn't. With Figma for Zoom, people can share designs or FigJam boards in the main Zoom Meetings window, where everyone can interact with them in real time-whether they have a Figma account or not.

"Figma leverages two key Zoom innovations for Meetings apps," says Arun Janakiraman, Group Product Manager for Apps and Marketplace at Zoom. "One ensures teams can actively engage with designs within the meeting, and the other allows external collaborators to join instantly without needing to be signed in, making creative team work faster and more accessible."

"We see Figma as not just a design tool but an entire platform for teams that build products together," Mullans says. "In a world where teams are using Zoom to collaborate in real-time, Figma makes remote work feel not quite so remote and brings both the social aspects and the more productive aspects of sharing designs and collaborating."

Working hand-in-hand to streamline customer workflows

The Figma app for Zoom is one of more than 2,700 apps and integrations created by developers and software providers who use Zoom's powerful developer toolkit to help streamline customer workflows and add new value to the platform. But building an integration doesn't happen overnight. In addition to the public Zoom documentation available to all developers, the development team at Figma took advantage of direct lines of communication with Zoom.

"We had bi-weekly talks with the Zoom Apps team," says Isaiah Turner, Software Engineer at Figma. "We could ask questions and get help debugging if something was going wrong. The Zoom SDK documentation was pretty comprehensive. That's really helpful for figuring out how to take the ideas we want to build and translate that into the code we need to write."

Turner also spoke at length about the challenges they had building the app, and how the Zoom documentation helped them find solutions. "Authentication was probably one of our trickiest situations," says Turner, "but Zoom had diagrams specifically to help out our situation, detailing how to do third party authentication. There were also some examples, so that made the process a lot easier."

Brainstorm, design, and develop with the best of them

"Our own teams use Figma and Zoom Meetings together," Mullans says. "We also see tons of customers collaborating, using both platforms to share designs, host virtual design sprints and design reviews, and present to leadership."

By bringing Figma directly into Zoom Meetings, teams can brainstorm, design, and build better products faster. No need to switch windows or re-share links. Whether you're reviewing designs or creating something new, the Figma app for Zoom keeps your team aligned and engaged, making work more efficient and enjoyable for everyone.

To collaborate in Figma during your next Zoom Meeting, download the app from the Zoom App Marketplace.