fix: video calls failing when forced E2EE meets persistent chat

[milton-rucks]

Proposed changes (including videos or screenshots)

Fixes a regression introduced by #41095: starting a video call from a direct message or private room fails when Force end-to-end encryption on private rooms and video conference persistent chat are both enabled.

Root cause

Persistent chat creates its discussion with encrypted: false hardcoded (service.ts createDiscussionForConference), and getDiscussionType returns 'p' for a private/DM parent. The forced-encryption policy added in #41095 therefore rejects the room creation with error-encrypted-private-rooms-enforced.

The damage comes from where that throw happens. In both startDirect and startGroup, maybeCreateDiscussion runs before the rest of the start sequence and was not guarded, so the throw aborted everything after it — while the VideoConference record had already been inserted:

Step	Order	Result on throw
VideoConferenceModel.createDirect/createGroup	before	✅ record already inserted
maybeCreateDiscussion	—	💥 throws
setUrlById	after	❌ no call URL
createMessage / setMessageById	after	❌ no start message
40s auto-cancel timer (direct)	after	❌ never scheduled → stuck in CALLING
sendPushNotification / ring broadcast	after	❌ no notifications

That matches the report exactly, including direct calls stuck in CALLING and group calls in STARTED. The error is then swallowed by the endpoint's catch, which returns diagnoseProvider(...) — and since the provider is healthy that resolves to undefined, so the client only shows the generic error-videoconf-unexpected.

The fix

The persistent chat discussion is skipped when — and only when — it is rejected by the forced-encryption policy (error-encrypted-private-rooms-enforced, matched via the existing isMeteorError helper). That is a known, permanent incompatibility, so it is treated as a designed skip and logged at warn.

Every other failure (invalid-room, circular prid reference, invalid-user, error-app-prevented, database errors) is rethrown and keeps the pre-existing behavior. Those are bugs rather than expected states, so they must not silently drop persistent chat — which admins may be relying on for record keeping.

The call now starts normally — URL, start message, notifications and the auto-cancel timer all run — just without a persistent chat discussion.

Encryption behavior itself is unchanged: the two features remain incompatible by design, since persistent chat history is meant to be readable. That is now surfaced to admins as a warning on the setting:

Not compatible with video conference persistent chat
Calls started in private rooms and direct messages will not create a persistent chat discussion, since those discussions are unencrypted. The calls themselves are not affected.

Rendered through the standard alert → Callout type='warning' path (<b> / <br/> only, matching the whitelist that Setting.tsx passes to <Trans>).

Files

• apps/meteor/server/services/video-conference/service.ts — skip the discussion on the encryption-policy rejection, rethrow anything else
• apps/meteor/server/settings/e2e.ts — alert on E2E_Force_Encryption_For_Private_Rooms
• packages/i18n/src/locales/en.i18n.json — Force_Encryption_For_Private_Rooms_Alert
• apps/meteor/tests/end-to-end/apps/video-conferences.ts — regression test
• changeset included

Issue(s)

Regression from #41095.

Steps to test or reproduce

1. Enable E2E_Enable, E2E_Force_Encryption_For_Private_Rooms, Discussion_enabled and VideoConf_Enable_Persistent_Chat.
2. Configure a video conference provider that supports persistent chat.
3. Open a direct message or a private room and start a video call.

Before: call creation fails, server throws error-encrypted-private-rooms-enforced, client shows error-videoconf-unexpected, and an unusable conference record is left behind (no URL, no discussion, no start message, no notifications; direct calls stuck in CALLING, private-room calls in STARTED).

After: the call starts normally and no persistent chat discussion is created. The skip is logged server-side at warn as Skipped the persistent chat discussion of a conference because encryption is enforced on private rooms.

Also check Admin → Settings → End-to-End Encryption: the Force end-to-end encryption on private rooms setting now shows the incompatibility warning.

Further comments

The guard is placed inside maybeCreateDiscussion rather than at the two call sites, so the "maybe" contract holds for every caller and there is a single place to reason about. The invalid-video-conference throw earlier in that method is deliberately left fatal — it means the just-created conference record is missing, which is a genuine internal inconsistency worth surfacing rather than hiding.

The guard was deliberately kept narrow. A blanket catch around the discussion creation would also fix the orphan-record problem for any failure and would match what addUserToDiscussion does one level down, but it would widen a regression fix into a behavior change and could silently stop persistent chat from being created when an unrelated bug appears. The orphan-record issue is pre-existing (it predates #41095, it is just far easier to hit now) and is better addressed on its own — the start sequence inserting the conference record before it can guarantee a usable call is the underlying problem.

Worth noting separately (not changed here): video-conference.start discards the real error in its catch and returns diagnoseProvider(...), which is why this failure was invisible from the client. Making that endpoint surface the underlying error would help diagnose similar issues, but it is out of scope for this regression fix.

Validated locally: tsc --noEmit clean across apps/meteor (0 errors, with workspace deps built), ESLint clean on all changed files (remaining warnings in service.ts are pre-existing, all above the changed region), and the i18n sort/validity check passes.

🤖 Generated with Claude Code

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[changeset-bot]

🦋 Changeset detected

Latest commit: a1ac3c8

The changes in this PR will be included in the next version bump.

This PR includes changesets to release 4 packages

Name	Type
@rocket.chat/meteor	Patch
@rocket.chat/i18n	Patch
@rocket.chat/core-typings	Patch
@rocket.chat/rest-typings	Patch

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[codecov]

Codecov Report

✅ All modified and coverable lines are covered by tests.
✅ Project coverage is 69.31%. Comparing base (13cf7ad) to head (a1ac3c8).

Additional details and impacted files

@@             Coverage Diff             @@
##           develop   #41960      +/-   ##
===========================================
- Coverage    69.34%   69.31%   -0.03%     
===========================================
  Files         4254     4254              
  Lines       168649   168650       +1     
  Branches     30022    30042      +20     
===========================================
- Hits        116947   116904      -43     
- Misses       46532    46566      +34     
- Partials      5170     5180      +10     

Flag	Coverage Δ
unit	71.23% <ø> (-0.06%)	⬇️

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[milton-rucks]

Substituído pelo #41963: reaberto como regression apontando para release-8.8.0 (onde a feature do #41095 está) e sem changeset — a feature já tem o seu.