My sincere apologies to David Plumpton and everybody who registered to meet him over Zoom.
I do not yet know the reason for the glitch but I can tell you what I saw.
I held a rehearsal with David shortly before the meeting. I noticed that David was in the waiting room and clicked the "Admit" button. The word "joining" appeared in the dialogue box but he did not appear. I clicked the "Admit" button again but nothing happened. A few minutes later David sent me a picture of his screen that indicated that he was waiting for me to let him in.
As David had only recently installed Zoom and was using a phone whereas I had a powerful PC that I bought for work I suggested that we should start again, I exited the screen and re-entered using the IP and password rather than the "Start Meeting" button. This time I was able to admit David. We chatted for a while and we agreed to meet at 14:45.
I re-entered the chatroom just before the meeting and waited for someone to arrive. Nicola came first. I clicked the "Admit" button and the dialogue box indicated that she was "joining". Shortly afterwards several other people appeared and I clicked "Admit all". Against each word appeared the word "joining". However, nobody came.
I tried to exit the meeting and re-entered only to find two icons of myself. I found 22 participants in the waiting room. Again I pressed the "Admit all" button and again received the "Joining" message but nothing happened.
At about that time I was getting phone calls on my mobile and landline and messages and emails which I tried to answer as quickly as possible. David promised to wait for a few minutes. I searched the "Support" database but could find no relevant article. Zoom does not offer customer support in real-time.
I bought the Zoom package primarily for work and have used it satisfactorily throughout the lockdown. I have held client meetings, meetings with colleagues, delivered two lectures, hosted three online classes and two "Stage Door" meetings without incident.
I do not claim any special expertise in computing but I was taught to code in Basic and COBOL as part of my research at UCLA and my first job at the Economist Intelligence Unit many years ago. I have been a member of the British Computer Society for nearly 40 years and part of my job as a patent lawyer is to cross-examine software engineers My guess is that this problem is caused by a recent software upgrade to address security. Since one of the complaints against Zoom has been unauthorized entry, the "Admit" function is exactly the sort of thing that a maintenance programmer would look at.
I have just received a message from Maria Chugai who says that others have had problems with Zoom all day. Bo said she had to wait for 30 minutes to get into a class. Wendy reported problems with Jane's class yesterday. All that would be consistent with a bug in the "Admit" function caused by the software upgrade.
I shall try to find out what happened over the next couple of days. If it is a software maintenance bug then it should be fixed soon. If not then I shall replace the package. The courts use Skype for Business in this country. Hangouts has worked well for meetings in the past and Google has recently added a webinar function to Hangouts. Nicola has suggested Cisco. The WIPO and EU use "GoToWebinar".I will spend the rest of the day looking into all those possibilities.
In order not to waste any more of your valuable time I shall not run any more classes or hold any more events until I am satisfied this will not happen again with Zoom or we have a robust alternative webinar product.
Once again, my abject and sincere apologies.
Post Script
Zoom application is down today. I experienced a problem while conducting a meeting where more than 100 attendees were expected and only few were able to join. There was problem with chat, voice and screen share. I had to abort meeting@zoom_us #zoomdown #zoom pic.twitter.com/9m2yRRNExg— Pawan Dhera (@pawandhera) May 17, 2020
Zoom issues and crashes at 12:17PM 05/17/2020 UTC! Website shows ~1,500 error reports! Retweet if you're having problems too!— Website Glitches/Crashes (@WebsiteCrashes) May 17, 2020
Site i used: https://t.co/8ykpZRYkeO#zoom#zoomdown pic.twitter.com/TznfMXlPUW
— Mkshsjgx (@Mandedelights) May 17, 2020
Post-post Script
Zoom seems to have fixed the problem. I set up a new meeting just now and was able to admit Bo and Sarh without any difficulty.
We can run future events as planned with Zoom but I will use Google Hangouts Meet as a backup. We shall reschedule David's talk to come on as soon as possible.
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