Creating and Using Zoom Continuous Meeting Chat

Allows meeting participants to communicate before, during, and after a meeting by creating a dedicated group chat in Zoom Team Chat for all meeting participants. When enabled, in-meeting chats will show up in that group chat as they are sent in the meeting, allowing meeting conversations to continue after a meeting ends. Schedule a recurring meeting and have a group chat that follows the group for the entire project, in and out of meetings.

Limitations for continuous meeting chat

• Continuous meeting chat does not support use with your Personal Meeting Room.
  The meeting ID must be generated automatically.
• Meetings created before continuous meeting chat was enabled for your account are not automatically supported. The meeting must be edited or rescheduled to support continuous meeting chat. You must edit the meeting to add continuous meeting chat. To do this, edit the meeting and check or toggle the continuous meeting chat option. You can also use Zoom schedulers or integrations through Firefox or Google Chrome extensions, Google Workplace add-on, or Outlook add-in.
• Ad-hoc or instant meetings are not supported. The meeting must be scheduled.
• Offline or in-person calendar events will not create a dedicated group chat, as there is no associated Zoom Meeting.
• Chats happening in breakout rooms will not sync over to the meeting group chat. 
• Group Lists or Distribution Lists are not fully supported. If using group lists or distribution lists to quickly enter numerous participants to the invite, the individual members of the list will get meeting invites, but those contacts will not automatically be added to the group chat. Individual contacts from the group or distribution list must be manually added to the group chat before or after the meeting.
• Interoperability with 3rd-party services through Mio is not supported at this time.
• Continuous meeting chat is not supported when Advanced Chat Encryption is enabled, or the meeting is scheduled with end-to-end encryption (E2EE).

How to schedule a meeting with continuous meeting chat

With continuous meeting chat enabled in your web settings, the Enable dedicated group chats for meeting conversations option is enabled by default when scheduling a meeting.

1. Begin to schedule a meeting.
2. Under the Attendees section (Invitees section in the web portal), search for contacts by name or email address.
3. Click to add each contact as an attendee.
4. (Optional) Click the X next to each contact name to remove them from the list.
5. Ensure the Enable dedicated group chats for meeting conversations option is checked.
   When the meeting is saved, all attendees will have the meeting added to their upcoming meetings list.

NOTES:

• Scheduling meetings through the web portal, desktop and mobile app, Outlook add-in, Google add on, and Chrome/Firefox scheduler extensions all support scheduling with Continuous Meeting Chat. When scheduling with a calendar add-in or extension, the attendees specified in the calendar event will be used instead of Zoom contacts chosen in the web portal, desktop client, and mobile app.
• Recurring meetings will have one group chat created for the entire series of meetings.
• If you don't invite anyone, the meeting will still be scheduled, but there won't be any existing attendees in the group chat.
• Inviting one contact will create a dedicated group chat associated with the meeting. Your one on one chat with that contact will not be used.
• External participants who are added to the invite are not automatically added to your meeting group chat. They can still participate in the meeting chat and see chat history from the moment they join, but they won’t see the history of the chat prior to them joining or after the meeting ends. The host can manually add them at any time if their account allows external participants to join chats.
• Internal participants who are added to the meeting via the "Invite" feature or by sharing the join link informally won’t be automatically added to the meeting group chat. They won’t have access to the chat history prior to joining the meeting or be able to chat before or after the meeting. However, the host or any other member of the group chat can add them to the group chat.
• Adding users to the meeting group chat does not automatically add them to the meeting invitation. Hosts should edit their invites and add any additional participants using their preferred scheduling tool.
• When using scheduling privilege to change the owner of a meeting scheduled with continuous meeting chat enabled, the owner of the dedicated group chat will also be changed.
• After a meeting ends, hosts can add internal users who attended the meeting but were not members of the meeting group chat. This could be because the users were not invited to the meeting, were added during the meeting, or were invited through a group list. The hosts will see a list of these participants, and they can approve all of them or select individual users to add to the meeting group chat.

How to use continuous meeting chat

Access the group chat before the meeting

A group chat will be automatically created when the meeting starts, but you can also access it and send messages to attendees before the first meeting ever starts. This can be used as an early staging area for the project you may be collaborating on, sharing meeting agendas or links to the group.

1. In the desktop client, click the Meetings  tab.
2. Find and select the meeting in your list of upcoming meetings.
   Alternatively, this can be done by clicking on the event through the Calendar  tab.
3. Click Chat .
   The group chat for this meeting will be opened in the Team Chat  tab, as well as accessible by using the search bar.
4. Send and reply to messages.
   These messages will be available before, during, and after the meeting.

Send chat messages during the meeting

When the scheduled meeting is started, any previous messages from the group chat will be available. If the group chat was not yet accessed, it is now available and visible to all original attendees in Team Chat and updated immediately with all messages sent in the meeting.

While the meeting is in progress, users who have been included in the meeting group chat can send messages to the meeting chat. This allows them to notify active meeting participants if they are running late, unable to join, or to provide a quick response. These messages can be seen by everyone present in the meeting, including external users.

Send, reply, and react to messages during the meeting.
NOTE: Some options during the live meeting may be unavailable due to the host’s chat settings.

Any messages sent to Meeting Group Chat will be also immediately available in the dedicated group chat. Messages sent directly to another meeting participant (private messages) will not be included in the dedicated group chat, are only visible (and locally savable) by those privy to the private messages, and will be unrecoverable when the meeting ends (unless saved locally).

During the meeting, hosts can choose to disable or restrict the meeting chat to only Hosts and Co-hosts. In such cases, the compose box in the meeting group chat will be temporarily disabled. It will remain inactive until the host restores the meeting chat to full functionality, or until the meeting ends.

Guest participants

Any participants added during the live meeting, either by sharing the link or invited directly, or external participants, even if they were part of the original invite, will be treated as a guest participant.

Guest participants will be able to send messages and see other messages sent during the meeting from the moment they join, but are unable to load messages from before joining, including those sent in the group chat before the meeting started. Their messages will be included in the group chat, but they will not be able to access the group chat, until a member adds them to the group chat.

Guest participants who were invited and joined during the live session won’t be automatically added to the calendar event and must be manually invited. Editing the meeting and inviting additional participants varies on your scheduling method.

Zoom Room devices are also considered a guest for meeting chats. Since they are a shared device, they get to participate in meeting chat for the duration of the meeting, but they cannot chat before or after the meeting.

NOTE: While hosts can limit certain chat features, such as allowing participants to delete their own in-meeting messages or react with emojis, these restrictions do not apply to the meeting group chat.

How to use the group chat after the meeting

Find and access the group chat

When the meeting ends, the meeting chat will be available for all internal members originally invited to to continue the meeting conversation. 

The meeting chat will appear in the left sidebar of the Team Chat tab, as a group chat with the same name as the meeting topic. These group chats are indicated by the calendar icon . Recurring meetings will be indicated via a recurring calendar icon.

If your client settings have the Organize by section option selected under Team Chat in client older than 5.15.X, this appears as Separate Chats and Channels. These meeting chats will show up under a new Meeting Chats section. If Organize by section is not selected, your meeting chats will appear in order of recency just as your other chats. The group chat can be searched for by the meeting name, or accessed through the Meetings tab.

All public messages, reactions, and threaded replies sent before the meeting, as well as all public messages sent during the meeting, will be available in the group chat.

Add participants to the meeting group chat

Large meetings or meetings set up through group or distribution lists can miss some participants and label them as a Guest during the meeting, which keeps them from seeing the group chat outside of the meeting, even though they might be needed in the meeting group chat. A list of participants labeled as guests will be shown to the host in a card after the meeting, allowing the host to choose to add them to the group chat. The host can Approve all or select / deselect individual participants they want to add to the meeting group chat.

How to manage the meeting group chat

Add members to the group chat

Any guest participants from the live meeting (not originally invited or external participants) must be manually added to the dedicated group chat.

1. Sign in to the Zoom desktop client.
2. Click the Team Chat tab .
3. Click the dedicated group chat.
4. In the top-right corner, click More Actions .
5. Next to the Members section, click the plus button  .
   A window will appear to search for and add members.
6. Use the search box to search for users, select one or more users you want to invite.
   Any external participants in the meeting must be a contact before they can be added to the group chat. Learn how to add external contacts.
   Note: Admin settings may prevent external participants from being added as a contact, preventing a group chat member from adding a particular external participant.
7. Click Add to confirm the additions.
   These participants will now have access to the group chat and messages thus far.

Learn more about how to add and remove members in this group chat.

Change the settings of the meeting group

The meeting host, who is also the owner of the meeting group chat, can adjust the group chat's permissions, restricting visibility of messages and files sent before a new user is added or restricting the ability for external users (users not on your account) can be added to the group chat. 

Restrict message and file history 

1. Sign in to the Zoom desktop client.
2. Click the Team Chat tab .
3. Click the dedicated group chat.
4. In the top-right corner, click More Actions .
5. Click More Options.
6. Click Edit Chat.
7. Uncheck the Message and File History box.

Restrict if external users can be added to the group chat

1. Sign in to the Zoom desktop client.
2. Click the Team Chat tab .
3. Click the dedicated group chat.
4. In the top-right corner, click More Actions .
5. Click More Options.
6. Click Edit Chat.
7. Click Advanced Permissions.
8. Uncheck the External users can be added box.
   Some organizations can lock this at account level.

NOTES:

• The following group chat functionalities are not available for meeting group chats:
  • Editing the name of a meeting group chat is disabled. To edit the name or subject of a meeting, you should edit the meeting invite and the changes will be reflected instantaneously.
  • Meeting group chats cannot be converted to channels.
  • Assign a new owner. Meeting host is the owner of the meeting group chat.
  • Schedule a meeting or initiate an ad-hoc meeting from a meeting group chat.
• Only hosts who are also the owners can delete a meeting group chat.
• Deleting a meeting group chat prior to meeting start time will remove this functionality from that meeting. Participants will be able to attend the meeting but meeting chat will not be available after the meeting.
• Declining a meeting invite will not remove someone from the meeting group chat. Participants who do not wish to continue the conversation can leave the meeting group chat any time just as they’d do with other chats.