Issues with Active Participant Display and/or Updating the Chat

In rare cases, there may be a problem with displaying the active participants and updating (chat) messages.


Fig. 1

You may notice this issue, for instance, when you enter a session and see the number of participants displayed in the Attending tab decreasing after a short time and eventually stay the same from then on.

There are multiple possibilities why this problem can occur:

One reason this may happen is if the browser time does not match the current time and the device's system time isn't set to the correct time. This can either be caused by an individual participant's device, however, sometimes a company-wide time-server setting can affect many individuals connected through the company server. These time servers are responsible for synchronizing all computers used by a company. In this case, the problem is not caused by a deviating time zone - which will always be considered correct - but rather a deviation of several seconds from the server time or atomic clock (approx. 30 seconds and more).


Fig. 2

If it's a local problem on a participant's device, you can usually fix it by synchronizing the time in the operating system's settings (see fig. 2 for Windows 10). The Apple Support has a detailed explanation for Mac users. If the time is managed by a corporate IT department and synchronized via a dedicated time server instead, you'll most likely not be able to configure these settings locally. 
In this case, please get in touch with your company's IT department.

This behavior can also be caused by 3rd party browser extensions or ad blockers which may block the Virtual Venue live updates (e.g. active participants, chat, Q&A). Disabling all extensions and ad blockers might solve this issue.

Lastly, the problem may arise due to very restrictive custom settings of corporate firewalls. Try to access the Virtual Venue from another network to see if that's what's causing the problem.