Chat Ability for All Attendees

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Chat Ability for All Attendees

Chat Ability for All Attendees

Can you have attendees in GoToWebinar talk or text "chat" to each other during a live 500 attendee event??

If you can't - PLEASE - change it so they can. It is terrible that there is no way to have the attendees interact with each other -

We have a weekly webinar on the same day, and same time EVERY week. Our clients like to be able to come to the event and interact with each other - and with the GoToMeeting there is no way to do that.

Only the organizer can see the "Questions" from attendees.

Let us know if there are plans to FIX this, thanks!

168 Comments
Chris Droessler
Respected Contributor

GoToMeeting has that feature, but GoToWebinar does not.

 

This has been discussed here as a program improvement to allow webinar Organizers the ability to turn On and Off the ability for the Attendees to chat.  This was not an issue years ago, but in a modern virtual meeting, people expect to be able to chat.

JHB
Frequent Contributor

Yep, G2W only has chat for staff, not attendees.

 

Not a great work-around, but we do sometimes use Q&A  for open-ended comments when I have a presenter who really wants the audience to share (e.g. "chat").  You usually need at least a couple of admins managing it, especially if at all high volume.

 

On my last one, we explained to attendees (repeatedly) the instructor at time would request feedback and to type answers in the question pane.  Hosts would "reply" with a single character, usually a period, to "publish" to everyone OR hosts would skim and verbally share responses.  Since the Q&A pane would be full of comments, if they had a true question, start it with Q: or Q-.

 

On that last one, I had 400+ attendees and a presenter who asked for comments about 5 times plus lots of real questions.  It took 3 of us to keep the question pane cleared.

 

It's not perfect by any means, but is a way to add more interactivity similar to chat.

 

Note - one thing that can get confusing is that a STAFF member (Organizer/Panelist) can send a message directly to an individual attendee. And the attendee can respond. If this happens:

  • Response shows up in Chat Window on staff side
  • Attendee's Q&A pane gets re-labeled Q&A/Chat (or something like that; the word "chat" appears . At least it used to.)

However, attendees don't have true chat capability; this is private messaging from a webinar staff member  to/from  a specific attendee.

Chris Droessler
Respected Contributor

People in my building are beginning to use a different virtual meeting tool, because it does have the attendee chat feature.  This other meeting tool lacks many of the GoToWebinar features that make for a great webinar, but my colleagues are willing to sacrifice meeting quality to get the chat feature they desire.

GilbertoVieira
Active Contributor

The client gave the idea that webinar users could talk to each other. The client said it would be good because they could exchange experiences and talk about what they think of the webinar as it happens

Berzsenyi
New Contributor

Customer would like the chat function to be available for all attendees and not just for organizer and panelist. They are also interested if a third party software is available to function as described.

Yann_ADM
Active Contributor

It is unfortunate, the participants are asking for this functionality. There should be an option to allow it.

Yann_ADM
Active Contributor

We have a great need for this functionality too, we are satisfied with LogMeIn products but if this functionality is not developed soon, we will probably go to another solution.
What worries me is that the original request for this post was from 2014 ... is an update planned ??

Ken4
Frequent Contributor

This feature would need to be an (on / off) option since in our educational activities we can't have attendees chat with others during the program.

Thanks 

Yann_ADM
Active Contributor

Yes absolutely, if that is an option, it's okk for me. But this feature should be exist for a long time. At each webinar, attendees are unhappy that they couldn't see the messages from other attendees.

HBrundage
Active Contributor

I am sad to see this thread because it for reasons like this, where GoToWebinar is a great platform missing a few very key features, which has been the case for YEARS, my company moved exclusively to Zoom in 2021.  I miss GoToWebinar's dashboard and reporting because both are far superior to Zoom's.  However, we could no longer afford to provide virtual events with limited participant interaction opportunities other than audio.  Participant video and chat, along with polls and registration, are now standard expectations and GoToWebinar did not keep up with repeated requests for these features.  I was hanging on to G2W until the end of 2020, when it became clear the features we really needed were either very far off in the future or never coming.