Unable to add external contacts to Channels

[TFFTutors]

Evening all

I am suddenly having issues adding external contacts/users to my channels. I have been able to do this for years yet suddenly today I am unable to. It states that an invite has been sent to the account yet those account holders have received nothing in their emails or on zoom client. 

This is a huge part of the way we use Zoom as we are easily able to share resources and docs with the appropriate accounts using the channel. So any help would be greatly appreciated. 

https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/360049320431

On the page above it states  that admins can enable disable certain external users privileges yet I cannot find where I can do this. 

[lavanya_madhiva]

I too have the same problem...Pls someone give a solution for this

[Lila25]

J'ai ce probleme pouvons nous avoir de l'aide?

[Trainer_JM]

We have also experienced this with some users.  They remain on pending invite status even after accepting our contact request.  This is a huge inconvenience.  We are using a service that is not functioning and with no other options and resolution seems to be far from being handled.

[OriginEducation]

Same problem here! We cannot share learning resources with new students as they are always pending and when they clink the channel link, it says the channel does not exist. Anyone can help solve the problem asap?

[FlorinS]

Our organization is experiencing the same issue. A very new user is able to see the notification, but others are unable to.

[jasiccabrend]

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@TFFTutors wrote:

Evening all

I am suddenly having issues adding external contacts/users to my channels. I have been able to do this for years yet suddenly today I am unable to. It states that an invite has been sent to the account yet those account holders have received nothing in their emails or on zoom client. 

This is a huge part of the way we use Zoom for meeting of website as we are easily able to share resources and docs with the appropriate accounts using the channel. So any help would be greatly appreciated. 

https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/360049320431

On the page above it states  that admins can enable disable certain external users privileges yet I cannot find where I can do this. 

---

Check your Zoom account settings to make sure that external contacts are allowed to join your channels.

To do this, follow these steps:

1. Go to the Zoom website and sign in to your account.
2. Click on Account Management and then Account Settings.
3. Click on the Meetings & Conferences tab.
4. Under Join Meetings, scroll down to the External Contacts section.
5. Make sure that the Allow external users to join channels option is enabled.

If this option is enabled and you are still having problems adding external contacts to your channels, you can try the following troubleshooting steps:

• Make sure that you are sending the invites to the correct email address.
• Ask the external contact to check their spam folder.
• Try resending the invite.
• Try adding the external contact to your Zoom contacts list and then inviting them to the channel.
• Contact Zoom support for assistance.

If you are unable to find the setting to enable or disable external contacts' privileges, it is possible that your account administrator has disabled this setting for your account. You can contact your account administrator for more information.

In addition to the above, here are some other things to keep in mind:

• External contacts must have a Zoom account in order to join your channels.
• External contacts can only join channels that they have been invited to.
• External contacts cannot create or manage channels.

[MacInTheBox]

I made sure all the settings are updated correctly, but still have the same issue.

I noticed all my contacts are now showing as "external", but they have the same email domain as I do. Looks like Zoom introduced a bug?

[OriginEducation]

I couldn't find 3. Meetings and Conferences tab!

[TFFTutors]

Thank you for your response. Unfortunately it doesn't show. My account is the owner account and I didn't have any one as an admin. However I went created a new account just to see if this would work and I made that account the admin. These options still did not appear. The only tabs that show are 

General, Meeting, Recording, Mail & Calendar, Audio Conferencing, Team Chat, Zoom Apps, Whiteboard, Zoom Events.

Hopefully someone from Zoom can clarify or are these options behind another paywall as I only have the Zoom pro account. If that is the case it is even more disturbing that such a basic setting needs to be paid for.

[ww12569]

Were you able to solve this issue? Our firm is still having this issue.

[FlorinS]

I'm uncertain if it will help everyone, but we have found that updating the Zoom client fixes the issue.

[OriginEducation]

How to updating the client?

[SKarlovitz]

Has anyone found an issue for this.  It is really impeding my ability to work with my clients.  I have tried all of the settings and updating the client.  Nothing seems to work and this has just started.

[FlorinS]

Have all parties updated their clients?

[SKarlovitz]

Yes, it doesn't make a difference.  This really needs to be fixed, how can Zoom release a change like this without testing it.  My communication with clients is completely gone.  Time to look into another option.

[BiancaWarner]

I'm experiencing the same issue. The external email shows as pending, even after we've added each other as a contact. I tested and sent an email request to my personal email and I never received a zoom email to accept into a group chat, nor to accept the contact request. Hopefully this is resolved as soon as possible.

[OriginEducation]

It is my third day contacting zoom customer service by calling them and emailing them about this issue. They still didn't get the idea how serious the problem is. I cannot believe they still want me to check the spellings and the space error of the clients emails. I am not that stupid...

[SKarlovitz]

It’s crazy. For me these are not even new contacts. I’ve been connected to them for years.  Just won’t allow anything but 1:1 communication. Not group chats or channels. 

[OriginEducation]

What can we do? Can we start complaint procedure when the customer service is not helping?

[S-staff]

I also have this problem. Hopefully Zoom will fix it soon. Otherwise I won't be able to use Zoom anymore

[AW4]

Same problem. Can tell you that it was released in the September 18th release and that a rollback won't fix it. Support keeps telling us that nothing is wrong, but whatever this is, is causing us a huge headache.

https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/13836402647693-Release-notes-for-Zoom-Team-Chat

It’s listed 4th under New and Enhanced Features for windows and macos only.

• Consent required for channel and group chat additions Windows, macOS
  Users will be presented with a consent notice before being added to an external channel or group chat. Adding external users to channels and group chats no longer requires contact requests. However, contact request approvals are still needed for one-on-one chats. This feature will not be immediately available, as it is dependent on a backend release, currently scheduled for September 24, 2023.

[TFFTutors]

Sorry to hear everyone else is also going through the same issues. I have been emailing to Zoom customer service throughout the week and wanted to wait to see if there was a solution on their end before saying anything. However I have been hugely disappointed with no real solution given to my issue.

It seems like the update was catered towards new users and not at loyal customers like us all who have found these issues. I'm also worried about the apparent missing tabs and options to manage the contacts privileges (which I did not know about before).

The one workaround I have found is using the mobile app. When inviting contacts from the channel it has an option to invite to Chat via link. Even this has problems as it doesn't let you directly message a contact on zoom. Long story short, after multiple experiments I found the easiest way to get contacts into the channel was to copy invite link and manually paste and send it to the contacts who wanted to join that specific channel. They would then click on the link and a approval request would show on the channel for me to approve.  

This is a very long winded approach and manual approach that ONLY works from your mobile phone app and I have been unable to do the same on the desktop client. When copying the channel link from the channels more menu option and trying the same thing it would say that the channel didn't exist/unable to join message to my contacts.   

I am more than happy to work with others when raising this as a complaint as it has affected the running of my business and has caused undue stress with the amount of time being wasted. It also makes us look extremely unprofessional to clients which is not what you expect with a paid service.  

[ALMSG]

I tried your solution just now and I sent out the invitation link by email.  I am hoping it works for everyone.  What upsets me is that we were switching over to the meeting chats and the channel chats because I thought it was a better way of communicating between our group members than via email but now all of a sudden it is not working.   So irritating!  Thank you for sharing your solution.

[SKarlovitz]

Thanks for the update!  As someone who works daily with dozens of channels and hundreds of external contacts this can not work long term(as you know).  I appreciate you finding this work around for us without it I am stuck with the "Since you are already in the channel can you you tell _____ to do _____".  I can not believe Zoom hasn't done anything to fix this yet!

ROLL BACK ROLL BACK!

[OriginEducation]

TFFTutors, thanks for the solution! It works!

[Rachel16]

It works!! Thank you!! At least we can work with this solution until it gets fixed by the Zoom team...  

[TomKo]

I've reported the problem twice but no response so far. They don't seem to be even aware of the problem but it's a major F-Up and if they don't fix it soon they will definitely lose some paying customers - me for example.

[Ragulan]

Finally, the good news is we can add external contacts to the channels.

Now external contacts get emails from Zoom and they need to accept them.

I managed to add a few external contacts to a channel yesterday.

[myitindy]

Here is the fix I found.

1) Update Zoom. Go to Zoom.us menu at top left and “Check for Updates.” You need to be on version: 5.16.2 (23409).

2) When you create a channel, you need to follow this screenshot and click Advanced Permissions -> External Users can be added.