WARNING to Zoom Webinar Hosts: Don't Use the New "Shared Content Only" Feature

[Dave31]

You may have noticed that Zoom recently released a new "Shared Content Only" view mode that webinar hosts can use in "Follow Host View" mode to hide all panelist video tiles and show only the shared content (like slides or any other screenshare).  It's a very useful new feature that was designed to let webinar hosts have more control over what their attendees are seeing.  There are definitely lots of use cases where a webinar host may want to hide all of the video tiles, especially during transitions between presentation or program segments.

HOWEVER... The problem is that the "Shared Content Only" view will NOT work for many of your attendees.  If attendees are using the browser-based version of Zoom, or if they have an older version of the Zoom desktop client, the video tiles WILL NOT disappear for them when the webinar host switches to "Shared Content Only" view.  As you might imagine, this can cause a lot of embarassing problems if the host THINKS they are hiding all of the panelist video when in fact a whole bunch of attendees are still seeing the video.

Zoom never bothered to tell their customers that this new feature does not work across all Zoom attendee versions.  And, even worse, after being told about this problem they apparently have no plans to fix it (this is what I've been told via a support ticket).

So - webinar hosts - don't use the "Shared Content Only" feature unless all of your attendees are using the most current version of the Zoom desktop client or the mobile app (of course, it's impossible to know this).  Since Zoom hasn't bothered telling their customers about this, hopefully this message will be seen by some and prevent potential embarassment.

It's really a shame that Zoom released a new feature that wasn't properly developed or tested.  If it actually worked correctly, it would be a very useful feature for webinar hosts.  As it stands now, it's pretty much useless if it doesn't work across the board for all attendees.

[Ray_Harwood]

Thanks for the alert, @Dave31.  You definitely found an issue that people need to be aware of.

What's interesting to me is that this menu item needed to be created at all. The same effect can easily be done when sharing a screen by:

1. Setting the Attendee View to Standard, and
2. Turning off all Panelist/Host cameras.

The statement by Zoom support that "they apparently have no plans to fix it" may be true, but this problem will eventually fix itself, once the Quarterly Lifecycle Policy catches up to Zoom V6.2.10, where this feature was introduced in the November 18, 2024 release.

Organizations that want to utilize this feature among their users internally can specify a minimum update to V6.2.10 and force-update their organization's devices.

[Dave31]

>>>>1.  Setting the Attendee View to Standard, an

>>>>2. Turning off all Panelist/Host cameras.

How is this a solution?  The whole point of the "Shared Content Only" view is to hide all video tiles when one or more panelists have their video on.  Of course turning off all video will hide all video!   You seem to be missing the whole point of what the feature does.

>>> but this problem will eventually fix itself, once the Quarterly Lifecycle Policy catches up to Zoom V6.2.10, where this feature was introduced in the November 18, 2024 release.

No it won't.  Even if all attendees are forced to upgade to th latest client, it still doesn't work on the browser-based version of Zoom.

>>>Organizations that want to utilize this feature among their users internally can specify a minimum update to V6.2.10 and force-update their organization's devices.

This is a topic for a different thread, but I have given up on trying to use the force-update setting.  After trying it several times, I have had repeated problems with panelists getting "stuck" in limbo as an "attendee" when trying to join the webinar practice session before the webinar has gone live.  It causes more problems than it's worth.

[YaBoiB]

Hello @Dave31 , 

 This will be addressed. There is nothing to "fix" necessarily, but we will work to let users know that this functionality works on a certain version of Zoom software. Browser-based Zoom sessions have always had certain limitations that are listed in KB0065520 support documentation. Please let me know if there is anything further that I can do to assist you. 

[Dave31]

What do you mean there's nothing to fix? Of course there is.  The feature does not work as it's supposed to.  How can all of the other view modes work in the browser but not this one?  That doesn't make sense.   As I've already tried to explain to Zoom support via my ticket, this is the kind of feature that needs to work across the board.  Yes, I know that the browser has certain limitations, but it doesn't have any view mode limitations except this one.  You can't have a view feature that doesn't work for all attendees. It makes the feature completely useless. Why would a webinar host want to change the view for only SOME of the attendees?  They wouldn't.   And what makes this even worse is that there's no way for a webinar host to even know it doesn't work across the board.  You've released a new feature under false pretenses.   The logical assumption is that when you change the view mode for your attendees, it's going to effect ALL attendees.   Otherwise, you would never want to use it in the first place.