Multiple participant join and leave requests from Zoom in one meeting

Description
Getting weird data (multiple participant join and leave HTTP POST requests from Zoom even though the participant only joined and left the meeting once).

Error
I am getting multiple participant join and leave HTTP POST requests from Zoom even though the participant only joined and left the meeting once.

Which App Type (OAuth / Chatbot / JWT / Webhook)?
Webhook

Which Endpoint/s?
https://marketplace.zoom.us/docs/api-reference/webhook-reference/meeting-events/participant-joined-meeting and https://marketplace.zoom.us/docs/api-reference/webhook-reference/meeting-events/participant-left

How To Reproduce (If applicable)
I have been unable to reproduce with my personal Zoom account or test accounts.

Screenshots (If applicable)
This is the data that we received from Zoom. As you can see, the leave time of the first request is the same as the join time of the second request. This has happened with multiple users multiple times during a single meeting, seemingly randomly (both to which user and how many times it happens during a single meeting).

Additional context
Happens repeatedly to one of our customer’s Zoom meetings.
This seems to only happen to users who didn’t sign into Zoom with their email. But it’s hard for us to merge on our end if the user_id (see first screenshot) of the user keeps changing and there might be people who enter the Zoom meeting with the same user_name.

Hey @wesley1 ,

Thanks for reaching out about this. Can you let me know the following when you have a chance?

  • Did this meeting have a waiting room enabled?
  • Were there any connection issues during this meeting that you know of?
  • Are you only seeing this for users who were guests (not logged into Zoom when they joined)

Let me know when you have a chance—this will help me to further investigate.

Thanks,
Will

No, the waiting room was not enabled.
There were no connection issues that we were aware of.
Yes, we are only seeing this for guests.

Thank you,
Wesley

Hi @wesley1,

Thank you for confirming. I’m looking into this for you (ZOOM-243932).

Thanks,
Will

Hi @wesley1,

Can you let me know if you come across a more recent example of this? Unfortunately our logs don’t allow us to go back as far as December of last year. However, I’d like to continue looking into this for you if you have a more recent example.

Thanks!
Will

Zoom MeetingID: 88511804363 was a particularly bad case from late Jan. Also 88511804363.

Thank you,
Wesley

Thanks @wesley1,

Do you have the webhook payloads or a screenshot that show the multiple join/leave requests, or a user ID for whom this happened? I’m not immediately seeing this reflected on my end when checking our logs for that meeting (88511804363), so this will be helpful to share with our Engineering team.

Let me know—thanks,
Will

Here are three examples where the join_time equals the leave_time and. You can ask the eng team to do a search on the user_names below or join_times that equal each other.

  1. It’s particularly bad for a guest with the user_name “Ryan”. Two user_ids for Ryan are 16827392 and 16828416. (They keep changing as I mentioned in my original post.)

  2. You can also see user_id 16854016 and user_id 16869376 for the user_name “John Christian Ferrer”.

There are other examples where the leave_time and join_time aren’t exactly the same but like a few seconds or minutes apart. But nonetheless, it happens to guests repeatedly.

Hi @wesley1,

Thanks for sharing this more recent example. In taking a look at Meeting 88511804363, I can see that the waiting room was enabled. In this case, I believe the webhook is being triggered when the user is entering the waiting room and then again when admitted to the meeting.

Do you have any examples where the waiting room was disabled and you see these duplicate events?

Thanks,
Will

So when we get like 3 requests in a row, that means that the user is entering the waiting room, leaving the waiting room to join the meeting, and then joining the meeting room? So join, leave, join, and then eventually leave? Does that mean that I shouldn’t ever have more than 3 requests in a row? What if there’s 3+ requests in a row? That doesn’t make sense to me. Is there a way to tell whether a meeting had a waiting room enabled or not from our end? (Or alternatively, be able to filter out meeting room join and leaves?) Each of our customers may use Zoom differently and that was what they told us.

Thanks,
Wesley

Hi @wesley1,

That’s correct—this can vary depending on when the user joins and leaves and whether or not there was a waiting room. However, if you’re seeing several requests for a user and the timing doesn’t line up with a waiting room (i.e., two join events at the beginning of the meeting), I would agree that sounds strange. If you have an example of this, please share it with me here. :slight_smile:

In terms of knowing whether a waiting room was enabled, you can see this in Previous Meetings section of your Zoom.us account for a given meeting:
image

Let me know if you have another example I can look into—thanks!
Will

Thanks for the details and I just had one more question before I try some things out on my end. I’m assuming these waiting room requests aren’t sent reliably and only happen to guests? Because I tried testing with two computers as guests and although the waiting room was enabled, I didn’t get the multiple requests problem.

Also, would the waiting room also explain why users seem to be leaving and rejoining during the middle of a call? I feel like a connection problem or some other problem may be more likely in these situations, no?

Thanks,
Wesley

Hi @wesley1,

Thanks for sharing these details—to clarify, if you’re seeing these multiple leaves/rejoins in the middle of the meeting, this seems unlikely that the waiting room would be the issue.

Do you have one of these examples you can share? If you can provide the Meeting ID and User ID, I’d like to look into this further.

I agree that based on the scenarios you’re running into, this may not just be a result of the waiting room settings.

Thanks,
Will

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