Stop lowering my hand!

[drosselli]

Recently a change was made to auto-lower raised hands when people stop talking. This is not working and we use the RAISED HAND for stand-ups and stand-downs to show who hasn't gone yet. Now, the system keeps lowering hands because someone may comment on another persons update and the system thinks that person is done talking. It's really annoying and not helpful.

[Frank_TB · Accepted solution]

Hello,

This forum is useful, but for more traction submit feedback to Zoom directly.

"Zoom welcomes your ideas, requests or comments about Zoom".

Submit your feature requests or complaints here;
https://zoom.us/feed  

Regards

[Eliot]

hi drosselli,

according to June 5, 2023 version 5.14.10 (17221) release notes:

Meeting features
Raise hand enhancements
The visibility of participants that have raised their hand is enhanced to make it easier for hosts to be aware of raised hands and take action to address that participant. A new notification will appear for those who raised their hand, with the option to immediately open the Participants panel and take action, such as requesting their unmute to ask their question. Users can enable an audio chime through client settings for when someone raises their hand. Lastly, after speaking with your hand raised, Zoom will start a countdown to lower your hand, unless manually canceled by the user.

when you mention stand-ups and stand-downs to show who hasn't gone yet, does 'who hasn't gone yet' equate to who has not spoken yet? 

thanks,  eliot

[drosselli]

During the meeting, someone (whose hand is raised and waiting for their turn) may speak up about another persons update. Because of this, even though the person who is speaking up is no longer talking, they still have not had their turn. Which means a lot of times the countdown starts or you miss it and your hand has been lowered when it should not have been. It causes a lot of confusion. I get the idea but there should be a way to disable it.

[BrassRing]

Are we able to disable this "handy" feature (which has been an annoyance in the worlds I inhabit?

[jlbutler5634]

Can Zoom make this an option that the host can disable? Some meetings do not want this option. Some folks are not attending in a way where they even see the popup. In the meetings I go to, hands are raised in an order. That order is relevant and now their hands are lowered if they miss the popup (and some do miss the popup). Making the disabling capacity at host level is relevant because the way our meeting room is used, there are folks hosting that don't have admin access to the account and some hosts may not want to disable this feature. This isn't for my personal account. This is for an account owned by a organization I belong to. Thank you for your consideration.

[coachvik]

YUP! this is a horrible feature for all the zooms I run and am in. 
Please make this optional. 

[Brian_eM]

This is a very confusing update for participants in a meeting.  In our meetings, people like to thank people for sharing after they have spoken.  So, if you have your hand raised and are waiting your turn to share in the meeting, but you unmute and thank another person for sharing, your hand is automatically lowered.  We do not wish to silence the ability for participants to thank others for sharing, however, this automatic hand lowering function seems to not be well thought out as far as its practical application in meetings where people unmute and thank others for sharing and should not have their hands automatically lowered, losing their position in the hand raised queue to share. 

[NwkBrickcity]

This new feature is more annoying than helpful; at the very least users/adm's should have the opportunity to disable this enhancement.  If you surveyed your millions of users you would most certainly get a hands down.  

[dadudzik]

This new feature (a bug as far as I am concerned)  is absolutely killing us.  It is causing multiple problems with the way our Zoom meetings are handled.  We now have let participation and more disruption because of this unnecessary functionality.

There has to be a way to turn this off!

[berkeleysquare]

Horrible. People have their hand up awaiting a turn and lose their place (or disappear entirely) after answering a question or making a comment.

[ChuckES1]

PLEASE make this configurable.  This is SUPER annoying.  When I have my hand raised, and then speak to help answer a question from another participant, I lose my place in line.   I had to wait 45 min because I went to the back of the line a few times.

[WritingNinja]

Yes! That happened to me too!! Four times I got booted out of the queue.
Sure, there is that little popup box --- at the bottom of the screen (and I have a huge screen) -- with a countdown to disable it. But when you're engrossed in a conversation, you're watching the people, not the bottom of the window. So you're going to see that every time. 
It's SOOOOO awful that you can't turn this off. It's a deal breaker for our workflow.

[amelia-]

"does 'who hasn't gone yet' equate to who has not spoken yet" The answer is no. One might comment on someone's update but still be left to take their turn for standup.

We have the exact same problem. Would be great if Zoom would allow us to disable this feature.

[louisbclark]

YES!!!

[louisbclark]

this started happening to me today. I hate it and i can't find a way to disable it. who asked for this???

[DevonHub]

100% agree that this new feature is extremely annoying to our team.  Similar to previous posts describe, we have used the raise hands feature for years in our team standup meetings to indicate who hasn't given a status yet.  This new automatic hands down feature needs to have a preference that allows it to be turned OFF because it's annoying. 

[tommyatl]

This new feature completely breaks standups and presumably many other forms of meeting.  It assumes that the only reason for raising hands is when there is a single presenter and everyone else is generally passive.  I've been in very few meetings which fit that model.

This feature should be disabled by default, but enabled by the host for individual meetings.

[jlbutler5634]

YES!!

[dbarrell]

I agree with all the above – the new feature might be useful in some cases (^) but completely breaks many uses of raised hands. Please allow us to disable the feature!

^ I will note that the auto lowering of hand countdown begins when you start talking, not when you finish talking, which is also something could be improved

[ECSF]

We run 2 meetings 7 days a week in groups between 25-70. We have someone assigned to mute and lower hands after each person speaks. This has become confusion and while a convenience for larger groups, not so in this setting. Please add a toggle for this. thanks. 

[Joseph_Phillips]

I agree and can confirm in our company we frequently use the raise hand feature as a "line/queue" to show order of people who want to talk. This falls apart when people randomly drop the line because of this new automated "feature" that is the opposite of helpful. Which also brings up another issue, which I will open a new post for - when someone joins a Zoom meeting with hands already raised before joining, the order doesn't get passed so everyone is out of order.

I'm confused on how Zoom would introduce a new feature and not include a setting to turn it off, especially since it has the capability to be disruptive. Automation almost always needs to have a manual override option!

[Frank_TB · Accepted solution]

Hello,

This forum is useful, but for more traction submit feedback to Zoom directly.

"Zoom welcomes your ideas, requests or comments about Zoom".

Submit your feature requests or complaints here;
https://zoom.us/feed  

Regards

[DevonHub · Accepted solution]

great advice.  thanks Frank

I used 'Help > Send Feedback' in the app to send a link to this forum thread along with my comments.  Hopefully that will help steer Zoom personnel to the traffic on this thread as well.

[BrassRing]

I'll chime in with my disapproval that this "handy feature" is annoying without settings and/or the ability to disable. I realize software developers gotta justify their jobs, but this was NOT a broken feature.

PLEASE add timer settings AND a disable feature...ASAFP..

[betofrega_tw]

Breaking changes should never be enabled by default. This is really disruptive to most types of meeting I go to.

[Rockonnyc]

Hi

Agree....really really bad choice for Zoom to implement this...it's almost as if they don't understand how their own platform works in actual use.

Today I found that if I click the "reactions" bar again it will stop the countdowns....so no need to lower and raise hand, just stops the countdown and leaves hand raised.  While this is unreal that it's a way to disable this after the first time speaking and no one will ever remember fully....it worked for me today.  Just wanted to share....Thanks!

[davidsilvadigip]

Yeah, this is a very poor implementation. Please add a way to turn this off as we raise our hands during stand ups.

[Bancroft]

Totally annoying feature, and makes commentary in a meeting really high-maintenance. Zoom can’t fix this soon enough. Best plan would be to make this stupid feature completely opt-in, rather than having us all have to opt out. How can we make Zoom fix this?

[corimft]

I can see where this feature could be helpful, but I attend daily meetings where one person is assigned to time speakers, and they need to unmute to alert the current speaker that their time is over.  If the person timing also has their hand up, their hand is taken down every time they unmute to mention the time.  This takes them out of the queue.  It would be FANTASTIC if people could turn this off for themselves individually in their own accounts, and if the host account could turn this off for the entire meeting.

[rbroadwell]

Yeah this feature is really annoying. Please give us the option to turn it off on an individual level.

[PatNolin]

I agree with the people who comment before, That feature should not be automatically enable. sometime, the host will ask a question and the person will think before answering. the fact that the hand is lowered automatically, will also move the picture of person in the list and then all the other persons will have to search where is the participant who is talking is now. 

[blavalleur]

Please stop this annoying and disruptive practice of lowering hands. Thank you. 

[AnnMargaretM]

ZOOM! Please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please give us the OPTION to use this feature or not!  IT DOES NOT WORK for meetings where attendees are in a queue, yet others comment "thank you" or "I heard you" when they are in the queue.  I've lost my place in queue so many times.  The STUPID 5 second alert is TEENY TINY - and unseen if you are paying attention to the speaker.  AT LEAST make the warning BIG and over the GALLERY so it is seen!!   But better yet, REMOVE this feature!! If not AT LEAST make it optional for meetings where it works.   PLEASE!  

[LH8]

I agree this is an awful feature! Please change back to how it was previously. Let us be responsible for raising and lowering our hands during a meeting.

[louisbclark]

I submitted this as a bug to zoom

here’s zoom’s reply (unbelievable!!!)

Angelica Cabreza (C)(Zoom)

Jul 25, 2023, 18:04 EDT

Hi Lou, 

Thank you for contacting Zoom Support, my name is Angelica I'd be happy to assist you. 

I understand that you're having issues with the "raised hand" feature. I'll be glad to assist you with this. It looks like this is a known bug "Raise Hand" not removed when the host uses Lower All Hands. A problem was fixed when the host used the option to Lower all hands or Clear all feedback, and a raised hand would remain visible, this was resolved in our latest release.

You can view in release notes from 8/28/22 in this article https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/8599706457229-Release-notes-for-August-28-2022. 

[aaaaaaaaaaa]

This feature has been driving me bats##t.  What were you thinking???  And why would you ever spring this on your users without lots of warning AND THE ABILITY TO TURN IT OFF!!!!!!!!

[Kamon]

Thank you for this topic, it is extremely disturbing and brought a lot of distress to our meetings. I am hosting several regular Zoom Rooms, and it is in not one meeting, where this feature is helpful.

Please remove it, or give the host to disable it!

[ms-esnet]

Agree that this feature plain stinks.  Can we PLEASE give an opt-out option?!

• In most cases, I (like many others in this thread) do not want to lower my hand, as I am doing a quick follow-up and not asking my full question/making my comment.
• It's clear that whoever decided to implement this feature has never been in an actual meeting.  Even if I want to lower my hand, I DO NOT want to be interrupted by a pop-up--that ends up distracting me and often causes me to lose train-of-thought.  It's a terribly disruptive feature that creates even more "Zoom fatigue."

[4iBSP]

Agree with everyone here, this feature is disruptive.

This thread seems worthy of a response now from Zoom?

Is there any communication or update on future plans for this 'feature'?

[squirrel_oof]

How do I turn this feature off?? I just scrolled the entire "meeting settings" section of the Zoom advanced settings. I don't see any option to turn off this feature. Don't tell me Zoom has rolled out the ability to turn off this feature yet? The auto-lower hand causes confusion. I do not see this as a helpful, one-size fits-all, should be automatically enabled, feature. So strange that we can't turn off the auto-lower hand after unmuting feature.

Zoom customer service peeps - please respond? Thanks in advance!