Multiple chats sessions with same contact in S4B window ?

[Peter Okorn]

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

[#2]

Just started to use S4B and it just blew my mind on what was going on. Been using slack, hangouts, (normal) skype and some other IMs but never even considered splitting up CHAT conversations like this - because that's what I have my email for. 

I'm just baffled on why the user isn't the focus of the product. Guess I have to circle back to some other im to get rid of team pain-points like this.

[#3]

Agreed. We've been waiting on a fix for over a year now. Unfortunately, my company is only supporting S4B, or I'd switch in a heartbeat. If you have any suggestions on 3rd-party messaging apps/plugins that will support Microsoft credentials, let us know.  

[#4]

Guys, I'm so glad to have finally found other people having to deal with this mess that is S4B instant messaging!

At work I'm in charge of the deployment of O365/S4B and previously we had been using Google Hangouts for instant messaging which was working like a charm! S4B has so many problems: synching conversation across devices (desktop vs mobile), no unique chat window/conversations per contact, lost messages that arrives 60-300 seconds later by email, etc.! My own users (which are mostly software engineers) are threatening me to go back to Google Hangouts or Slack because their workflow is greatly hindered and I can't blame them!

Anyway, I know that my comment won't change anything but I wanted to share my personal experience!

Microsoft has let us down a long time ago!

[#5]

As the agile manifesto puts it: "Individuals & interactions over processes & tools".
So just help your team to use their preferred tool and they might even come back to use S4B when MS have sorted out their issues.

[#6]

Sorry, but this is not really the right way to do things from a security perspective! In an enterprise context, you want your users' credentials to be centralized (in a directory like AD or LDAP), you surely don't want them to create their own personal account on whatever tools they like and lost control of your security!

[#7]

Philip, this still remains an issue - March 8, 2018. Thanks for your update.

[#8]

Robert - we are working on the fix to the split conversation problem, but have not yet released the fix in an insider build.  We discovered some crashing problems with the fix and performance issues in loading the chat window.  We had to pause work on this to respond to high priority bugs that came through our support channel, including: frequently getting a black screen instead of seeing screen sharing in a meeting, app crashes on El Capitan, and failures when trying to join meetings.  I know everyone is anxiously awaiting a fix for this, and we will get it out as soon as we can.

Phil.

[#9]

Hello Phil, 

regarding this issue, I think the SfB architecture has some serious flaws by choosing session based chatting as fundamental structure, instead of contact based chatting with a session add-on/extension.

I fully understand that you cannot fix the architecture in a quick way now, but there are definitely ways to solve this on a client. If backing chats together comes with performance issues, your team should let SfB maintain a local chat cache for each contact when this option is turned on. This way, loading a chat will not require to load dozens of sessions you had with the contact, but instead, load the cache. If you limit the cache by time (let's say 1 year), there is no need to worry about too much size. Of course, the first time ever, the chat window will take a while to open, but this will be only once per contact, not every time you open a chat.

This issue is way too long open and should already be solved, in my opinion. I expect a more professional level handling issues from Microsoft.

[#10]

Almost April 2018 and this feature for single continuous session 1:1 is still not available...

[#11]

In for updates, this is literally the most frustrating user experience I've ever dealt with for a messaging app. I see some discussion in previous posts about Windows vs Mac and I have this issue on both my X1 Yoga running Windows 10 Pro and on my MacBook Pro on High Sierra. Honestly wish my company had a better option for messaging via our Microsoft accounts.

[#12]

Hi Phil

I can see here

https://support.office.com/en-us/article/what-s-new-in-skype-for-business-cece9f93-add1-4d93-9a38-56...

a screenshot with "Merge conversations from the same user"

Unfortunately I cannot see this option on S4B on ver. 16.16.102 on my MacBook

Wrong screenshot or a bug in this release ?

[#13]

You weren't supposed to see that. It is a very complicated issue and they are working on it, lol. Honestly I am amazed this is so complicated... At this point you would think they would have chosen completely rebuild if it's that bad. Switching to Cisco Jabber and Spark are my solutions of choice.

[#14]

Good catch!  That was a screenshot taken from an internal build.  We are working on a solution to the split conversation problem, as I have said.  Progress on that fix was paused last month as our team was heads down on solving problems that caused screen sharing to be blocked in meetings.  We are picking this back up again.

Phil.

[#15]

Is there a new ETA on this fix?

-Thread was started in January 2017
-Initial timeline for the fix was "Summer 2017",
-Pushed to "October 2017"
-Pushed to "End of year 2017",
-Pushed to "Possibly in January 2018"
-Pushed to Q1 2018
-???

[#16]

My company recently migrated to Office 365 and has started using Skype for IM between departments. The split chats and slow synchronization between the iPhone app and Windows client are the two complaints I'm hearing the most so far.

[#17]

Why?

[#18]

I also have this issue. I have people uninstalling or completely removing the application for others based on this single issue alone. 

It would be nice to see this issue escalated so that it can be patched ASAP!

[#19]

My colleagues are looking strange at me....
It might be cuz I'm shouting out random sentences in the open office space using words like dark lords and stuff.

Tomorrow I have to speak with HR (again). All I really wanted to do was to send a message within a group chat! F**k me sideways!

[#20]

Any update on a fix for this?  this is a deal breaker and we are considering moving to Slack. 

[#21]

In the 16 months since this thread was started, I've come to the understanding that Microsoft doesn't actually care about resolving this issue. Session-based messaging is horrible, period. I'm not sure what is so difficult about switching to a contact-based format like every other functional messaging app in the world.