Chat Feature Unavailable During Webinar

[HeatherLaski]

Hi All,

Has anyone else run into the issue of the chat feature being unavailable to attendees during a Zoom webinar? We typically start the practice session and select the "chat" view, but this time that wasn't done in advance of starting the webinar, but I feel like that wouldn't/shouldn't affect anything. All of our settings are the same as previous webinars, so I'm unsure what happened. Attendees were able to "raise their hands" and we could unmute them, but they could not chat. Is this a glitch that Zoom had, or has anyone else nixed selecting chat in the practice session/had this as a result? Thanks in advance for your help!

[YaBoiB]

Hello @HeatherLaski,

My name is Brandon. Thanks for joining the Zoom Community! Only the host can control Webinar Chat, so were you the host of this webinar, or was someone else from your company the host? 

Thanks, 

Brandon

[HeatherLaski]

Yes, I was the host

[YaBoiB]

Hello @HeatherLaski, 

 I did a test and the default in the practice session is for the attendees to chat with no one, so you would need to adjust that before the start of the webinar using the elipses. See screenshot. 

I took this screenshot while in the practice session on a test webinar. 

Thanks, 

Brandon

 

[HeatherLaski]

Thank you, Brandon @YaBoiB !

That has never happened to us before, and I just did a test myself and that was not the default. Very strange! I've made note to double-check this aspect in future practice sessions. Is this a recent default change on Zoom's part, or something that was selected when setting up the webinar?

[YaBoiB]

Hi @HeatherLaski,

 Ok, I did some more digging and you can change the default for this in your account settings. This has not changed since webinars were first introduced to Zoom, but the functionality that Zoom Account Admins can adjust has changed over the years. If you are an account admin you can go to https://zoom.us/account/setting and look at your In-Meeting Chat setting to see if one of your admins or Owner of the account has adjusted the way that chat starts in a Meeting or Webinar. Please note that changes that are made in the admin portal affect all users on the account for their meetings/webinars. 

 

Kind Regards,

Brandon 

[Rah123]

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