Webmeeting Is a Mess and Unusable and has been for years. Given Covid, Will 3cx now fix it!

[bouncy]

Web meetings and Webinars are a mess, and they have been for years. There are plenty of users complaining about exactly the same issues. Given the current covid climate, you would think that 3cx would spend a little time fixing this.

As a web meeting, every participant is set as the organiser, and they grey the option out so you cant disable it. As a webinar, they disable the participants ability to turn off and on their own camera's which makes no sense, and again disable the option for you to give back control. I can understand the mic, but not the cameras.

I appreciate new features, but I can see posts going back to 2017 regarding this. Are their any plans to fix it?

 

[Juan Marriott]

Web meetings and Webinars are a mess, and they have been for years. Their are plenty of users complaining about exactly the same issues. Given the current covid climate, you would think that 3cx would spend a little time fixing this.

As a web meeting, every participant is set as the organiser, and they grey the option out so you cant disable it. As a webinar, they disable the participants ability to turn off and on their own camera's which makes no sense, and again disable the option for you to give back control. I can understand the mic, but not the cameras.

I appreciate new features, but I can see posts going back to 2017 regarding this. Are their any plans to fix it?

HI, How far are you from 3CX webmeeting servers?
I love the idea of having all on one single platform(voice, chat and video), But right now I am waiting for the on premise MCU.

 

[NickD_3CX]

Hi @bouncy

First to correct you on one point:

...they disable the participants ability to turn off and on their own camera's which makes no sense, and again disable the option for you to give back control.

Wrong. Any participant can disable their camera or microphone at any time and in fact, if the organizer tries to re-enable it, it will first prompt the participant for permission to do this.

Given the current covid climate, you would think that 3cx would spend a little time fixing this.

We put A LOT of time into WebMeeting over the past 18 months, including us having an offer where we provided 3CX hosted free of charge for a period of time last year during the height of the pandemic to give a quick and easy Video Conferencing solution to people in need of it.


Onto the other points, for the WebMeeting, you are right, this mode is meant to have participants of equal rights, so it makes sense that everyone has most of the rights.
If an organizer doesn't want that, make a "Webinar" where by default all invited people are "participants" and you can elevate anyone you want after they join to another role, like "co-host".


Anyway, I just want to say that we appreciate your feedback, but the way some of the things you mention work is not planned to change any time soon as far as I am aware, so I would suggest maybe searching for some other Video Conferencing platform that meets your needs.


On other news, we are continuing to improve our Video Conferencing platform and as @Juan Marriott pointed out, in V18 there will also be an option for an on-premise solution, so keep an eye out for any updates!

 

[bouncy]

First to correct you on one point:
Wrong. Any participant can disable their camera or microphone at any time and in fact, if the organizer tries to re-enable it, it will first prompt the participant for permission to do this.

Wrong. The point I was making wasn't that the organiser can enable a camera without permission, the point I was trying to make was that if a participant disabled their camera or mic in this profile and then tried to reenable them, they can't as they don't have permission to do so. They are effectively locked out of participating under those circumstances.

Another point made was I have found posts going back to 2017 complaining about the same strange behaviour.

Onto the other points, for the WebMeeting, you are right, this mode is meant to have participants of equal rights, so it makes sense that everyone has most of the rights.

This mode is meant to have participants of equal rights???? Perhaps rather than making an arbitrary decision on what you think organisers need. you should ask them? Why wouldn't you give the organiser the choice of who can hijack their meeting, removing the original organisers permissions, and kick all the participants out? Could you just give me a little time before you respond while I make all my users Domain Admins on our domain, and Global Admin's on our Microsoft 365 tenant so all the staff have equal rights, because based on your reasoning, I don't see any problems arising from that.

We put A LOT of time into WebMeeting over the past 18 months, including us having an offer where we provided 3CX hosted free of charge for a period of time last year during the height of the pandemic to give a quick and easy Video Conferencing solution to people in need of it.

I am sure that those who don't pay for your offering may appreciate this gesture, but while my account may show me as a free user, our business pays licencing through a reseller. Other web meeting providers offerings are also free and incredibly flexible, and more importantly, they don't make an arbitrary assumption that every participant must be an administrator of that meeting. Can you imagine if the Parish Council of Handforth had used 3cx instead of zoom in the Web Meeting profile. The chair would have kicked the organiser and assigned arbitrator out of that meeting, and in fact any person viewing it could have kicked anyone out.

some of the things you mention work is not planned to change any time soon as far as I am aware, so I would suggest maybe searching for some other Video Conferencing platform that meets your needs.

At the time, the web meeting features were considered a potential bonus when we started paying for licencing to your platform. This response is a very poor one, which highlights the level of support expected from 3cx. This is a real shame as your core pbx on its own is an amazing product.

 

[Alphabetic]

I must admit, I also find it strange that I cant make a web meeting whereby participants only have control of their own mic/cam. I think "everyone is an organizer" should be a toggle-able option when setting up a webmeeting.

 

[bouncy]

I must admit, I also find it strange that I cant make a web meeting whereby participants only have control of their own mic/cam. I think "everyone is an organizer" should be a toggle-able option when setting up a webmeeting.

The only people who don't seem to think this should be the case is 3cx.

 

[N_G]

I think its made great strides forward in the last 12 months. That said the issue of meeting organizer is being discussed internally.

 

[bouncy]

I think its made great strides forward in the last 12 months. That said the issue of meeting organizer is being discussed internally.

While that is good to know, perhaps rather than just discussing the issue of meeting organiser, you should discuss the wider issue of profiles with options, and allowing organisers to make choices to either make their own profiles, or to at least be able to tick or untick the boxes you display, but disable. Participants are not equal to an organiser as described by your staffer NickD_3CX in the above thread, they are invited participants.

 

[N_G]

Yes i am checking to give you a straight answer. What i can say is that the ability for participants to control video and audio of others will be an option and will be off by default in v18. To be perfectly honest i am awaiting an answer and will post it here. Webmeeting is not my specialty.