Time Sync Issue - Zoom Rooms (macOS)

[momall]

The clock on Zoom Rooms in conference rooms with Mac minis consistently falls behind by as much as 50 seconds. I flagged this to Zoom support, and three tickets later, I was told it wasn't an issue and to submit a feature request on this community board. 

I don't see a section for feature requests, as the link I was given did not work (access issue).

This has affected multiple rooms, and it seems like a baseline level of functionality rather than some unreasonable expectation. 

I've observed this on Apple silicon on various versions of Zoom Rooms.

If anyone else has this issue, please comment. It would be greatly appreciated if someone from Zoom was interested in assisting.

[bstrelko]

I absolutely can share in commiseration regarding Zoom's default response of "we're infallible, that's a feature request" instead of, "maybe we should fix the thing we didn't build correctly or put enough thought into - sorry, we don't actually use our product 24/7 like you do, and absolutely don't run it on all hardware that we 'certify' ". 
Have run into this for much larger issues than this one that are blatantly bugs, to the point where everyone on our Zoom support team (from Zoom) agrees, but product/dev wins out because they seemingly have all the power.

Regarding your specific issue, ZRs' time-reporting is typically based on the host device - example: a ZRC or scheduling display may report a different time than the main display because time-zone, internal time, or NTP-based clock on the actual device (scheduler, controller, etc) are different than the main ZR compute. 
Can you confirm whether or not the Mac Minis themselves keep accurate time? When you remote into one of these machines or exit the ZR application, is the time reported by the OS precise and correct? 

[momall]

@bstrelko The system time reported by macOS is correct and not behind. I verified that all room devices were on the same NTP. It's worth noting that sometimes this issue takes awhile to manifest after closing and relaunching the Zoom Rooms app. 

[bstrelko]

Got it. Definitely seems like a bug.

Any change when playing around with the new timezone setting for one of these rooms in the admin portal? Unsurprisingly, there's no technical explanation for how this feature actually works and whether or not it uses its own time server.

[momall]

I did briefly experiment with adjusting the time zone for the room. I'll take another look and see if either setting it to another zone and then back works or taking a look at the hierarchy (room, city, building) and see if anything looks odd with the affected rooms.

I'll have some time next week when I'm on-site. Thanks for offering some input!