Multiple chats sessions with same contact in S4B window ?

Brass Contributor

I see multiple instances of chats with the same contact.  This is really cluttering up my Skype for Business app window in both my mobile iOS and my desktop app.

 

Example:

Chat session with Joe at 10:00 for 10 minutes

Chat session with Joe again at 14:00 for 15 minutes

 

Now I see two separate chat streams with the same contact.  Why isn't this singular?  If I have a chat session with Joe and i do not actively remove/delete that chat session, shouldn't it just continue the next time one of us write?

 

Is this by design?  Do I need to adjust something in Skype for Business Admin on 365? 

 

I am using latest builds .  iOS Version 6.11.1.310 and Mac OSX 16.2.156

 

Please help, this is sure to cause complaints amongst staff and I expect will introduce user acceptance numbers to drop.  Especially if this is to be compard to WhatsApp, or any attempt to replace WhatsApp.

 

Cheers p

 

S4B - multiple chat sessions.png

192 Replies

I have same question/frustration. I work a large, global company so am constantly chatting with co-workers. My chat window is so long now, with all these conversations listed separately, that it scrolls forever and I'm missing important IMs. (And when I delete the old discussions, they somehow re-populate in the chat window again.)

 

Desperately looking for a solution.

Hi Christine,


I agree, this is becoming an issue.  The whole point of unified messaging through Skype for Business is to provide singular experience for chats/IM's.  This will be especially important if people start sharing files.

 

Microsoft or MVP, any solutions here?

 

Best, P

I have the same frustration. We recently transitioned from Skype to S4B and I hate the fact that it creates a separate chat for each tiny conversation instead of keeping one long running chat like the non-business Skype does. It's really annoying. 

 

I know we're not the only people with this same complaint.......... Please fix this M$

This is why my company stopped using sfb.
We tried team, but no notofication on channel, we stopped also.

Hi Peter,

Thank you for your feedback - we have seen and heard this feedback from many customers; it is an experience that we would like to improve.  As an explanation, you see this behavior because each conversation in Skype for Business is session based.

 

Toward the goal of improving the experience, we are looking to group 1:1 conversations together.  This update should be released sometime in Summer 2017.

 

Thanks!

Nick

Hi Nick,

 

Ok, great, that's good news.  From a chat perspective, this really should be similar to WhatsApp, if I may say that.  There is something very simplistic to being able to scroll up and review old messages, and, a single avenue to all shared documents/media as well.  

 

Can I ask, how will this change affect the Conversation History in Outlook?  

 

Thanks,

 

P

Hi Peter,

Great question; I am not entirely sure how this would affect conversation history, if at all...  Before I come up with some wild ideas; let me circle back with the Product Owner (PO) and see if they have and initial thoughts on this one.

 

Thanks!

Nick

Quickly following up here...  As I had thought, we would group conversations in your convo history (in outlook) as well.

 

 

Hi Nick,

 

Great, thanks for the follow-up.  Looking forward to Summer 2017.

 

All the best, p

Hi Nick,

 

Even I'm eagerly awaiting the update in S4B to merge conversations for 1:1 chats.

 

Its summer here in Dallas ;)

 

Regards,

Amit

Any updates on the ETA of the 1:1 chats instead of session based chats? Our company has decided to abandon S4B for the moment and look at other IM options as this is an absolute deal-breaker (not to mention the other stability issues we've seen with S4B). We're constantly having to log back in and end up missing chat attempts if the software hasn't actively been used for a while (like a timeout of some sort).  I wish we could simply create a "pro" version of the consumer Skype instead of these failed attempts to make Lync work.

Same here... my company abandoned SfB in favor of Cisco Spark. Stability and persistency to be the main issues. What I dont understand is why this works great in Skype with multiple devices and not SfB on even one machine. 

 

 

Must have
I agree, this should be solved as soon as possible to have a Skype (Consumer) oder whatsapp like Chat history
Hm, it's summer now :o) However, my guess is that it will take at least another 6 months until the feature will be available on-prem.

Guys, don't be in a hurry, the windows users waiting for this feature since years.. :)

Hi all,

I am checking with our Engineering team to see where we are with this work and whether we have a release schedule identified.  Sit tight and I will circle back when I have an update.

 

Thanks!

Nick

We have stopped using SFB now have switched to Slack. Seem you are losing a lot of users because of the lack of this basic feature. 

I have a few questions for those who are experiencing problem with what I'll call "split conversations."  If you can help me, I would appreciate it.

 

  • Which version of the app are you using?  This thread started in January, but we made significant improvements to split conversations in the April release (16.6).  If you are using an older version of the app, updating could fix this problem.

If you are still seeing the problem:

  • How frequently does it happen?
  • Have you noticed a pattern when it happens?  Are there steps that reliably cause this to happen?  If so, please describe in detail.
  • Does a conversation get split when there are messages sent close to each other (within a minute or two) or over longer periods of time (>10 minutes)? 
  • Does this tend to happen with specific contacts or in general?  When it happens, are the people you are IMing with also on Mac or Windows or mobile apps?

Thanks,

Phil Garding (Microsoft)

Using version 16.9.3

 

This occurs multiple times everyday and consistently happens across all of my contacts.  There doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason as to when a new conversation tab will split off.  I will be IM'ing with someone regularly and randomly the next message from the contact will be split off.  It never splits off when I'm sending a new message.