Forum Discussion
Chat error in a company meeting
We've been testing some larger meetings in Teams and have had generally good performance. We ran into an unusual issue recently. We had about 125 people in the meeting and they were all invited directly from the meeting scheduled in the Teams app on Windows.
We were testing the chat function and several users were unable to access the chat. They got the error "Only team members can chat. Ask the team owner to make you a member."
The meeting was not associated with a team, individuals were invited just by adding them as attendees.
Screenshot attached of the error. Has anyone seen this before?
Yesterday we experienced the same issue. We only had 6 people on the call at the time and were testing people join different meetings using the hyperlinks taken from the outlook calendar invite pasted into a teams chat window.
Only one person on the call experienced the issue and dropping and re-connecting did not resolve. Will be interested in how to resolve this as we will be setting up a series of large events using separate teams calls for breakout rooms.
ArtMarshall Well, well, looks like quite a number of people are experiencing this problem, and I wonder if Microsoft is ever going to grace us with a reply...
In my case, I am having people from outside the organization join a meeting via a link I have sent them, and they are doing it via the web browser (so, no need to either authenticate themselves or install the client on their computer; they just have to enter their name when they join the meeting). I still want them to be able to participate in the group chat, though. Isn't there any way to allow guests to access the chat?
Just had several members of our Org have the same issue ArtMarshall
ArtMarshall
We just ran into the same issue for the first time with 96 participants joining.
Only some users were affected but we have not been able to find a pattern.
Also, the users affect by this didn't have the option to record the meeting, it was just not present at all for them.camiloivthat's very similar to what we saw. No discernible pattern. Some users reported that closing the Teams app, signing in to the web client and then rejoining with the Teams client worked (though I'm not 100% that those steps were helpful.
I have this error right now. This is a company-wide meeting that was setup from Outlook and not as part of a channel or Team. Is there anything being investigated for this?
Leaving the meeting and going back in seems to have resolved it but this is getting really annoying.
Our team is seeing this intermittently as well. I had at least one report on a large meeting of ~150 individuals experiencing this error. The first time, he joined by clicking on the link in Outlook and experienced the problem. The second time, he joined from Teams on the Calendar tab and things worked as expected.
If anyone else has opened an MS ticket and wouldn't mind sharing the number, I'll drop it in my ticket as well, just PM me.
Hi Chuawang,
I am having the same issue and it happens when a meeting commences from the Calendar or Outlook. It does not occur when "Meet Now" option is clicked and members are added in real-time. I have enabled Chat option in the Teams Admin configuration. Screenshot attached.
Will appreciate any guidance as we have a webinar series with external participants to start in a couple of days.
Vivek
- 19617021. It's archived as I didn't have anyone else to follow up with on the issue as it's just sporadic.
- You were using this option ? In a group chat (so with a few people at once, but outside of a channel)
We've had several additional meetings since our test and the problem has not recurred. The only change that I'm aware of is that we moved from our standalone Exchange server to Office 365 online. I'd be curious to see if others who are having the problem are running standalone Exchange (or other) email servers.
- Hi Art - when we experienced this problem, all mailboxes were located in Exchange Online. We still maintain hybrid for management, but all mailboxes and public autodiscover is set to Exchange Online.
I have not heard of this issue re-appearing yet either, but we don't always get all the reports. I'm still working with MS Support and will update if I get any usable information.
ArtMarshall Same problem for us, basically same circumstances. All hands meetings or larger (> 20) meetings and we are random behavior of a handful of users not being able to see the chat / getting the same message. When they reconnect, they can successfully get access. Wonder if it's something throttling related.
JimBakerSame issue here too. Using the Teams meeting as a webinar, found that a bunch of users get the same error. Exchange Online and Teams. Unable to reproduce it myself via three different computers during the meeting.
WilliamsJK2 It's the weirdest thing. I've been having this issue for the past 4 days now and can't get rid of it. It happens for me like this: When I go to calendar on teams > create a meeting > add an attendee, the meeting gets created and I can send the meeting link to anyone and they can join as guest where the chat works fine. The problem happens when I do the same process, but also add the meeting to a team's channel. Once I add the meeting to the channel, it gets created, but guest can't use the chat function. I've gone through all the guest settings, but no changes I've made worked.
ArtMarshall
I've had the same thing - trying to participate in a third-party Teams conference call, Chat greyed out- I just had 2/140 people in an internal webinar have this issue.
Is this not by design?
This tech note from a knowledge base, suggests it is, and is just down to whether an individual is a member of the right team:
BrianMilnesNo. This issue is happening to meetings that are occurring OUTSIDE of a team, hence there are random people (i.e. guests) who are unable to chat during a Teams Meeting.
