topic Started meeting and can not post a Chat to Everyone as I used too till a participant joins! in Webex Meetings and Webex App

Started meeting and can not post a Chat to Everyone as I used too till a participant joins!

kndskelton — Wed, 17 Mar 2021 14:14:33 GMT

Been noticing this behavior lately. I start the meeting and normally will post a message in the Chat for everyone. An example.. I post in the Chat that I have placed everyone Mute on Entry..

Used to work well but, the two last releases (updates) this hasn't worked for me. I have to wait till I have at least one Participant Join before I'm able to post anything in the chat box.

Has anyone else experienced this?

Re: Started meeting and can not post a Chat to Everyone as I used too till a participant joins!

Roray Stewart — Wed, 17 Mar 2021 14:41:33 GMT

Hi @kndskelton, there is another post with similar issues. A couple of us have open TAC cases with Webex on this subject. The issue appears to be have slightly different forms, our one for example is that users running 41.1 or older software will not be able to chat to Everyone but the issue isn't present in 41.2 or 41.3. There is a bug which is due to be fixed in 41.4 to sort issue out.

Re: Started meeting and can not post a Chat to Everyone as I used too till a participant joins!

RedNectar — Wed, 17 Mar 2021 20:31:00 GMT

Hi @kndskelton ,

Participants can't see any chats that appear in the chat session before they join anyway, so even if you COULD post a message in the chat before anyone joined, no one would see it anyway - so sorry if you were under the illusion when you were able to post that anyone actually saw your message - this is why I go through the very cumbersome process of setting up a Webex (Teams) chat session in parallel with every Webex Meeting (some of my meatings go for 8 hrs/day x 5 days) so participants can see historical comments in the chat session,

In fact, I'd use Webex (Teams) for the whole meeting except there are certain features that I need in Webex Meetings that Webex (Teams) lacks - most importantly the ability for a participant to raise a hand and the ability of a host to mute everyone at once. And althoug Webex (Teams') whiteboard feature is cumbersome and soo not designed for a computer interface, it isbetter than Webex Meetings (although it lacks some of the featires of Webex Meetings - like the ability to draw a box) and most importantly, the whiteboard stays in the Webex (Teams) space after the meeting has ended.

So at the end of the day, you were never able to put a message in the Chat that anyone ever saw, so maybe this is a more honest behaviour - to NOT be able to past a chat before someone joins.

Re: Started meeting and can not post a Chat to Everyone as I used too till a participant joins!

kndskelton — Thu, 18 Mar 2021 12:50:10 GMT

Thank you all. As shared.. I used to be able to do this with all my accounts. I did ask for away to post an idea for a welcome screen without having to share my screen. Seems to make sense to me. The work around at the time was to post in chat. Used to work anyway! Now.. just have to wait for one participant to join and I can do it.

Re: Started meeting and can not post a Chat to Everyone as I used too till a participant joins!

Roray Stewart — Thu, 18 Mar 2021 15:14:53 GMT

Would Share > File and have a PowerPoint slide or document with the message(s) you want participants to see as they join be a workaround. That way you aren't sharing an application or screen, once you are ready to begin just close that file on Webex. Just a thought, haven't given it a test myself yet.

Re: Started meeting and can not post a Chat to Everyone as I used too till a participant joins!

BGR — Wed, 24 Mar 2021 21:29:12 GMT

We often share > file as Roray suggested, load a housekeeping PPT and then go to View > Automatically Advance Pages and set it to advance the pages automatically so that participants can see how to use the Webex functions as they join.

Re: Started meeting and can not post a Chat to Everyone as I used too till a participant joins!

kndskelton — Thu, 25 Mar 2021 13:54:44 GMT

Thank you. I appreciate the direction and have done the auto-advancing PPT in the past, but, fact remains that posting a note in Chat used to work! Actually, submitted an idea (a few months ago) to create a Custom welcome screen. I know there is that capability now but, haven't tried yet.

Re: Started meeting and can not post a Chat to Everyone as I used too

wireman84 — Wed, 14 Jun 2023 19:35:02 GMT

Fixed by TAC for Everyone: https://community.cisco.com/t5/webex-meetings-and-webex-app/where-has-the-meeting-chat-window-gone-to/m-p/4854829/highlight/true#M10519

Re: Started meeting and can not post a Chat to Everyone as I used too

jessicastellar74 — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 02:08:23 GMT

Hey