Forum Discussion
Multiple chats sessions with same contact in S4B window ?
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First, let me say 'thanks' to everyone for patience on this. I know that this is a frustrating experience in the UI. Unfortunately, the timeline for a fix that I had original expected has not worked out. We are not ignoring the issue, nor are we declining to fix it because of Teams.
In the latest Insider release, we have an improvement that prevents multiple windows if a conversation is open in a separate window. (Show conversations in separate windows is enabled in Preferences, or you have double-clicked an item in chats to pop out a window.) In this case, we will reuse the same, open window for all conversations with that contact. This does not prevent multiple entries in the Chats list for the same contact.
Since this has been a long-running discussion, and people have asserted various solutions over time, I will offer some context on the issue and our efforts to resolve it.
The fundamental problem is that Office Communicator/Lync/Skype for Business conversation model is session-based, not people-based, so every conversation between two people is distinct and stored independently in the conversation history in Exchange. This has been true since the original Office Communicator product, and the entire ecosystem is built around the architecture. Rearchitecting the entire product ecosystem is not feasible. (Note that Skype consumer service uses a completely different back end that was built independently when Skype was it's own company.)
The Chats list in the app shows the conversation history where you see multiple conversations sessions with the same person. The problem comes in that the Chats list also acts as a tabbed "switcher" for conversations. As a conversation history, it's fine. As a switcher, it is not. (Note that in the Windows SfB app, the conversation history and tabbed list of open conversations are separate so this confusion doesn't happen.) Our efforts to mask the underlying session model have exposed various issues that made the proposed solution unstable, perform poorly, or not work correctly in various scenarios.
We are continuing to look at how we can best address this issue.
Phil Garding
Hey all, Found a fix; https://gsuite.google.com/
are you kidding me .. I just moved our company to s4b and getting run-down by user complaints because of multiple conversation windows, "messages can't be sent", email of chat sessions even though they were in an active chat session.
MS if you want to keep you status as a professional office tool, get these stupid small things fixed, so it is at least usable, I mean how f'n hard can it be EVERY other chat based system has this figured out.
I understand that you say it is a fundamental change in the core programming, but can you really afford NOT to fix this, I mean how many companies can you loose because of these "bugs" before it becomes feasible to actually just fix it.I really hope you guys fix this soon so I don't need to spend time migrating to another platform.
It has been over a year and a half since this ticket was raised. I wouldn't hold your breath for a fix any time soon.
- Just signed up for S4B and this is the biggest complaint. Any recent news?
"As a conversation history, it's fine" is probably not a statement anybody outside of the S4B team would agree with. It's not fine and completely antithetical to how any text-based communication software works. I can't tell you how many times I have to scroll through pages of history to find something that would have taken a few seconds in a contact-based chat window.
How do people on the S4B team not feel these glaring pain points shared by millions of business users worldwide? As it stands, I have to treat any information in Skype as a ticking time bomb that needs to be copied somewhere else immediately because I know it will be difficult to find when I need it.A year and a half has gone by. I'd assume this isn't *that* complicated seeing how several other clients have achieved it years ago. I think we are at a point where the real question is not when it will be done, but why has MSFT been unable to do this?
Gripe over. Any updates?I completely concur!
Hi,
Is there any further update on this? I've read through the thread and everyone seems to be getting as frustrated as i feel. Skype for business worked perfectly on my windows machine, but ive just moved across onto Mac OSX (not by choice) and skype for business functions totally differently to what im used to.
The separate chats with the same person are incredibly annoying and unorganised.
Any updates would be great,
Many Thanks in advance
I feel as if grouping sessions by contact would be better as a compromise. I'd rather click into a contact and see all the sessions related to them, at least I'd be able to track the audio/visual and IM sessions far more easily. I'd also consider not exposing missed calls as a sessions, it just makes too much noise and makes it harder to find legitimate IM sessions.
This way you can keep your session based back end but present a people based front end. My two cents at least.
I really appreciate your thorough reply. It's good to know someone is listening!
