I need attendees to be able to chat with each other, but I don't see how.

[Heidi Tennant]

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?

[Michael16 · Accepted solution]

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.

[Fran Simon]

I 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.

[AshC]

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 Conley]

how do we use chat with 100 attendees in our gotowebinar?

[AshC]

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 Burris]

That'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.

[carehart]

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.

[GlennD]

Sorry @carehart, that was a typo by AshC, which I have now corrected. He meant GoToMeeting Plus which allows for up to 100 attendees has chat. At this time open chat is not supported in GoToWebinar.

[carehart]

OK, thanks for the clarification. Do comments here make it back to consideration by the GTW team? or must we take some additional step to get this considered (or would you say "really, don't bother. it's pretty much never gonna change in GTW"?)