The Zoom Chat is broken (previous messages disappear after Breakout Rooms)

[mrjankeck]

⚠️ The Zoom Meeting Chat is broken!!

Two of the Zoom Tech Hosts on my team have discovered that previous chat messages disappear once you enter or come back from a Breakout Room.

For anyone who has been sharing instructions in the chat before you send participants off to do an activity, this has some very serious consequences.

My team put together this list of why this is such an important issue:

a) participants not being able to scroll up the chat history for important information or revisiting comments from people - someone you want to direct message maybe. In cases where it's a large group and participation is only through chat (no unmuting allowed), this would be hugely detrimental.

b) the feeling of 'I have to open, look at the link, act now' when something is posted in the chat, otherwise it's gone. Only after the meeting would you be able to revisit the chat history and access that information. More difficult to stay present and not be distracted I think.

c) creating more work for facilitators/tech hosts by having to constantly put things in the chat that have been wiped out.

d) sending ppl off to breakout room with no history or carry over of their prompt, instructions etc for their task.

I really hope this is just a Zoom bug and is fixed with the upcoming chat updates this month 🙏🙏🙏

[RW2023]

Agreed. We have just found it too, and it is really bad to lose the previous chat. When will Zoom fix this bug?

[Frank_TB]

Submit a support ticket

https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/requests/new

[JamesBaker]

Yes this is a huge regression, to lose the ability to see past messages/instructions.

Looks like we can turn off "New meeting chat experience" in settings, as a temporary workaround: https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/11402067412109-Enabling-the-new-meeting-chat-experience

[RaulTeacherB]

This problem is horrible. I'm a teacher and this really affects the class, because now if I have questions that I want my students to discuss in the breakout rooms, the questions and instructions automatically disappear when they go there. 'Mrjanjeck explained it perfectly. Please Zoom fix this problem as soon as possible. Unfortunately, I'm still not understanding the workaround provided by 'JamesBaker'. I can't find what they have in the instructions. I'm getting stuck at instruction number 4.

[RW2023]

Zoom's irresponsible to release new software with a bug like this. It is clear that the software has not been properly tested, and thousands of users are suffering from this disaster, which completely disrupts any kind of situation where people use breakout rooms for education or similar. It hs been known since 7th January.

If this cavalier approach to the development of software happened in some other properly regulated industries, then Zoom would probably face severe consequences. An urgent fix is required.

[polzinm]

This problem is also happening during internal meetings for my organization.  This will be especially problematic during client trainings.

[RaulTeacherB]

Please complain about it to Zoom. Zoom prioritizes bug fixes based on a lot of criteria, including volume of reports about an issue.

https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/requests/new 

[JamesBaker]

Tier-2 Zoom support just told me: "You are correct that the feature "New Meeting Chat Experience" when enabled will clear chat messages when you go back to the main meeting from a breakout room. Our Engineering team has confirmed that it is the expected behavior. "

Looks like they need to hear loudly, in support tickets, from lots more people in order to recognize the impact that clearing the chat in every transition has on their customers.

[RW2023]

I am not sure that the Engineering team understands the meaning of "expected". It was clearly not expected behaviour from those who have found the problem. In fact, it can only have been unexpected as it has been flagged as an issue by a number of people. 

While on the subject of expected behaviour, I think it s reasonable for customers to expect an experience whereby the company supplying a service exhibits more professionalism when developing new products or services, as opposed to dumping on them a severe inconvenience without any proper testing, consultation or thought as to the consequences of their action.

If someone hit me and bruised me, then I would at least expect an apology, rather than be told it is expected behaviour. Being punched is only expected from someone who does not understand basic norms of behaviour.

Developing IT may seem to be far removed from physical behaviour, but the moral and ethical principles which govern human behaviour can still apply. I look forward to an immediate apology to all customers who have suffered this problem. I hope you do too!

[teletha]

WTH, Zoom?! This is a primary function that groups depend on. 

[CarlaA]

Hello everyone!

I am really sorry that this has affected your meetings and can assure you that your feedback on this feature is being heard. I have sent these threads to our engineers and they are working hard to come up with a fix in the very near future. As a workaround, please turn OFF the New meeting chat experience* in the web portal. When this feature is disabled, in-meeting chats will remain when switching between the main room and breakout rooms.

*This setting can be found in the In Meeting (Basic) section of account-level, group-level, and user-level settings.

I hope this was helpful. I thank you for your patience!

Carla,
Zoom Community Team

[karenmc3]

Toggling this off does not resolve the problem. What is the ETA for a fix please?  

[rochellemaan22]

I turned off the New meeting chat experience but still, the previous messages disappears. I submitted tickets last week and this week as well but they were unable to respond to my open ticket at this time.

[CarlaA]

Thank you for helping to troubleshoot? Im interested in seeing if this is specific to your device or network. Are you able to access zoom.us using your cellular device without wifi? What about on a different computer or the same computer on a different wifi network? 

Keep me posted!

Carla,
Zoom Community Team

[rochellevelasco]

Hi Carla,

I used both my mobile and laptop during the test, but the chat history still disappears when I join the breakout room. Has this bug been fixed on your end?