Chat in Breakout Rooms Disabled

[BORO151]

Hi,

I'm admin for TEAMS in a school. We need to use the breakout rooms with our students. Within the breakout rooms the chat function is disabled for all students although in the main meeting chat is enabled for them, even when they have the presenter role (see image). For teachers the chat function is enabled. Where can I enable the chat for students? Thanks!

[#2 · Accepted solution]

Hi, is this still an issue? There was some disruption in the Teams infrastructure at the time of your post affecting the service. I know the chat was one problem.

If the problem persist, please update this conversation with additional info.

[#3]

@ChristianBergstrom 

It is still an issue for us. Students can chat in the main meeting but not in the breakout rooms.

[#4]

Note that we have Chat disabled outside of Teams because we can't have students chatting unmonitored. Within a Team and regular Meetings within the Team they can chat/message, the problem only appears when trying to Chat in Breakout Rooms. I would expect that a Breakout Room would have the same "configuration" as the main Meeting but it appears that Breakout rooms are separate and "outside" the main Meeting and even "outside" the Team. Is that intentional? Anything we can do to change this?

[#5]

Hi, a chat messaging policy is outside of the chat functionality in Teams meetings. So, if you’re allowing chat in meetings (per participant policy) it will be available in breakout rooms as well. But as they can chat in the main Teams meeting window something must be wrong. I suggest opening a ticket with the official Microsoft support.

See this as well (under resolved).

Title: Some users may have been unable to send or receive chat messages, or load chat data within Microsoft Teams

User Impact: Users may have been unable to send or receive chat messages, or load chat data within Microsoft Teams.

Final status: We've identified that a section of infrastructure, responsible for processing chat message requests, was not performing as expected. Our automated recovery system repaired this problem, and we confirmed that service was restored after monitoring the environment.

Scope of impact: Impact was specific to users who were served through the affected infrastructure located in the Europe, Middle East, and Africa regions.

[#6]

@BORO151  @Shanon Wieler  @ChristianBergstrom 
I am a tech coach for a larger district in Michigan and we are having this same issue. We also have chat disabled at the district level due to highly inappropriate misuse. But have been utilizing Teams/Channel meetings so teachers can have the ability to delete inappropriate student messages as well as not allowing students to chat outside of class.

We've tried changing the channel settings as well as the team settings and nothing seems to allow chat within the breakout rooms when meeting in a channel.

Has there been any new info regarding this problem? Any solutions?

[#7]

@TechCoachJT 

We submitted a ticket to Microsoft and they pointed out a setting that we had missed in the Meeting Policy.  "Allow chat in meetings" should be enabled. We've had no trouble since. 

[#8]

Thank you for responding! :) @Shanon Wieler 

[#9]

@Shanon Wieler Hi Shanon, that's odd. I remember you said they could chat in the main meeting so if your policy was set to what the picture displays that wouldn't had worked. So my guess here is that it also involved assigned policies to the individuals, allowing or not allowing chat in meetings. Correct?

[#10]

@ChristianBergstrom The fix Microsoft proposed (enabling that option) didn't make sense to us either, as students were still able to chat in the main meeting. But we tried it anyway and it worked so that was good enough for us given all the other little fires we are tending to!

[#11]

@Shanon Wieler 

I have no idea how to get to this Participants & guests page!  Where do I find this?  I have 8 different teams (8 classes) and lots to keep track of on a regular basis.  My students cannot chat during breakout rooms either.  

[#12]

@Dee_Nice, your Office 365 Admin will need to change it in the Microsoft Teams Admin Center, under Meetings>Meeting Policies.