Mic not picking up outside sounds and chat settings all messed up

I have turned on sound for musicians in two places, but still when I ring a chime on my phone, people in my Zoom meeting can't hear it. Furthermore I'm finding that when a timer someone in the group has set goes off, that sound is not as clear as before. Lastly, someone messed with the chat feature. It used to be that you would select who to send a message to and it would go direct. Now there are a bunch of tiles and everyone's confused about how to send direct messages. PLEASE HELP!