Description
Had a very disappointment experience with Zoom WebSDK. We had an event recently using Zoom WebSDK. The platform was tested well with people from India, Spain and Korea. But at the event day, most of the users weren’t able to hear each other. They could see each other but couldn’t hear each other.
Error
Users weren’t able to speak with each on in WebSDK. We provided an alternate to users to copy the zoom link and join the meeting where they were able to communicate. But WebSDK was failer.
Which version?
We were using 1.8.3. We tried to upgrade to 1.8.6 but most of the users were getting a black screen and some console error(Don’t have the screenshot)
Device (please complete the following information):
All the devices.
Additional context
I’m not sure why WebSDK is so unstable. Initial I had a problem with Chat which was later fixed in 1.8.3. But the audio issue was inconsistent. It occurred only for certain users. Which was hard to explain to the users.
Zoom posted several messages both on the developer forum, documentation page and via email to all developers that have subscriber to updates.
There was a major, required SDK update (1.8.5) on 10th January, when Zoom implemented AES 256-bit GCM for SDKs. Anyone who didn’t update to the new SDK would lose audio functionality in their meetings.
You will need to update from 1.8.3 as soon as possible. The latest version 1.8.6 also fixed some issues with black screens - so please try updating to that, and let us know if you have any issues. I’m using 1.8.6 and it has been very stable so far.
Thank you for reaching out to the Zoom Developer Forum. I’m sorry to hear that you had a bad experience when using the Web SDK! The information @alexmayo offered about our latest major SDK update is correct and seems to line up with what you mentioned.
Are you still encountering audio or black screen issues with the Web SDK after migrating to v1.8.6?
I had upgraded to 1.8.3 around first week of Dec because I was facing issue with the Chat functionality.
Later we had developed and deployed the changes for our client around 11th Jan’20. Also we had tested the meeting till 18th Jan’20 for Spain, Korea and India and had no issues with the meeting.
That is why I didn’t visited the Zoom community or devforum till the day of the event when we received complaints about the audio issue.
Even then few people like me the meeting was still working at 1.8.3. Don’t know why either.
Also I tried to upgrade to 1.8.6 once I understood that the Zoom had stopped the support of 1.8.3 but the problem became worse as people initially users were able to get into the meeting but after the upgrade everyone were getting black screen and we had to rollback to 1.8.3 so that they can at least connect with each other.
Now I have subscribe to update from Zoom so that I’m notified.
I hope you understand the scenario, as for a person like me will only visit the community or forum when there is any issue.
And we need like a month for any changes to apply and deploy for production as we need to test with wide number of cases and users.
Sudden major changes like these can cause our clients to lose faith in our product.
I haven’t tested it again, but its to something with cache because when I got a black screen after the upgrade, I did a hard refresh and then I was able to join the meeting. But not all the user think like a developer for them its an ERROR.
Thank you for the update. I definitely understand your concerns about the timeline of the Web SDK upgrade that we pushed out. We are focusing on allowing a longer testing period when we release these types of major updates in the future.
If this was working on 1.8.3 after January 10th, that would likely be because the users that are on the Desktop client had an older version that didn’t have AES 256-bit GCM encryption implemented. I would instruct users to make sure their Zoom client is up-to-date, given that you have a longer testing timeline in the future.
I haven’t seen other instances of caching issues from moving to 1.8.6 just yet but one potential workaround that I like to employ in my web apps is to listen for the ‘updateFound’ event provided by a PWA service worker. When the update is found, I clear the browser and app cache before refreshing to the new version. This may or may not work for your use-case but there is a 3rd party post on how that can be done here.
Sorry for the issues that updated caused, I hope that helps! Let me know if you have any questions or encounter any further issues.
We had integrated WebSDK using the files from below link.
Our platform consist of php script including the meeting.html(from WebSDK files) inside an iframe. So there was no chance of users using Zoom Desktop Client or Web Client.
So we are using WebSDK with 1.8.3 and not Zoom Desktop client when it was still working for few users including mine.
Will look into this. Thanks!
One last question, I would like to know why Zoom included the “AES 256-bit GCM encryption” as it was working fine before. Any article reference link will help. Thanks!
Thank you for providing additional information. That’s interesting to hear that it was working for some on v1.8.3 and not others. I still think this is related to the update but I can’t pinpoint exactly why that would be. If you see this issue in the future, on v1.8.5+ please reach out and I’ll investigate it further.
One last question, I would like to know why Zoom included the “AES 256-bit GCM encryption” as it was working fine before. Any article reference link will help. Thanks!
We added the encryption to the Web SDK to better align with our goals to make Zoom the most secure communications platform and to match the functionality of the desktop client. We added this encryption to our desktop client in April and this helps bring feature parity between the two.
Here is some information on our efforts to improve security and this change:
One more suggestion. It would be great if Zoom includes a message to inform the users in the meeting window itself that the Web SDK version they are using is out-dated. (e.g. simile to web browsers)
So such kind of issues can be avoided in the future.
