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 ha...
Chat Ability for All Attendees
Heidi Tennant
9 years agoVisitor
I just hosted a webinar where the presenter assumed attendees could see each other's posts, and it was awkward. How do I accomplish this? Do I have to paste every Question into the Chat box?
- Michael169 years agoRetired GoTo Contributor
Hi Heidi, it is currently not possible for attendees to chat with other attendees; however, organizers/panelists responding to questions do have the option to "Respond to all" when answering to questions, rather than responding privately to the individual asking the question.
- Tho-Mas6 years agoActive Contributor
what could be the/a reason this Send Privately or Send to All button is inactive (greyed out) ?
We were facing that few weeks ago at some Organisers events ...- Ken46 years agoFrequent Contributor
I don't believe there is an option for attendees to chat with each other. Now the panelist can chat with the attendees, individually or to all. I haven't run into the chat buttons not working correctly.
We have a webinar taking place today at 3 so we'll see if the issue is cleared up. My issues could have been with a new software trying to install or something in the background on our side. We'll see. A GTW tech will be on our webinar today at the beginning.
- Fran Simon9 years agoActive ContributorI work around that by entering in one blank space after every response and clicking "respond to all". It is time-consuming, but I do it. That's one of the reasons I always have someone else working with me as an organizer in every session. I sure wish there was a public chat option like so many of the competing systems have.
- kgacuheart6 years agoVisitor
Yes, a public chat option would be crucial for my needs.
- AshC9 years agoRetired GoTo Contributor
The main reason chat is not included for GoToWebinar attendees is because you could potentially have a two thousand person audience. Allowing attendees to chat could violate some privacy rules of certain organizations, and also greatly distract audience members. We do have Chat available for up to 200 attendees however, with GoToTraining, and 100 attendees with GoToMeeting if you feel that you need this function for your broadcasts to smaller audiences.
- Sharon Conley8 years agoNew Memberhow do we use chat with 100 attendees in our gotowebinar?
- carehart7 years agoActive Contributor
Yes, GTW folks: How do we do enable chat in smaller GTW sessions?
AshC had said above, "We do have Chat available for up to 200 attendees however, with GoToTraining, and 100 attendees with GoToWebinar if you feel that you need this function for your broadcasts to smaller audiences."
Sharon had asked here how we could do that, almost a year ago but no one has replied. I, too, would like to know. And it seems Carla, the next commenter, would as well. We hear the concerns you have for disabling it by default, but we would love to be able enable it by our choice as Ash was indicating.
- AshC8 years agoRetired GoTo Contributor
Hi Sharon,
You can send a chat message through the GoToWebinar interface addressed to the entire audience.
Chat its self was designed for staff members, while 'Questions' were designed for attendees to enter them and Organizers to manage this potentially large list in their Attendee Questions pane. - Carla Burris8 years agoNew MemberThat's fine if Citrix is worried that some orgs might have privacy rules, but that's very obviously not a concern for many others (based on the large number of people asking for this feature). It seems simple enough to give us a checkbox on the webinar management page so you can CHOOSE if you want to prevent attendees from chatting.
- shayhoe7 years agoActive Contributor
We just switched to GoToWebinar and didn't realize attendees couldn't chat between each other. We would definately use this feature
- shayhoe7 years agoActive Contributor
We use this for training large groups and find having someone in the background engaging the users through the chat board helps keep users engaged in the content and share ideas and comments or just affirm what's being said. This works best when everyone can see the comments
- Ken47 years agoFrequent Contributor
I could see some wanting this option but our group wouldn't so as long as it was a feature we could turn on or off, that's great. For our CE activities we don't see the need for attendees to communicate with eachother.
Thanks
- Chris Droessler7 years agoRespected Contributor
For 95 percent of our webinars our Attendees do not need to communicate with each other.
- Ken47 years agoFrequent Contributor
Agree, this isn't something we'd want. Because of our education it's more important the attendee focus on the content from the faculty
- AshC6 years agoRetired GoTo Contributor
Hi itomlinson ,
We do have an existing thread on this topic, which I have merged now. Regarding the timeline for development, we don't have any updates yet and will certainly let everyone know as soon as information becomes available.
- HBrundage5 years agoActive Contributor
I like the idea of an option for attendees to chat with each other. We looked at GoToTraning and it doesn't fit our needs as well as GoToWebinar. Often we have smaller groups on a discussion-based webinar and we unmute their lines (individually, which is time-consuming, but that's another issue). It would be very helpful to have the option to allow attendees to chat with each other so they could share resources and tips while someone else is talking.