In-game chat rooms do not work.
This is possibly a bug and a fairly inconvenient one at that as you can't invite people now unless you friend them through steam. The chat invite had been a reliable means of creating lobbies with player communities without bloating up the friend list so it missing is a sorely felt one.
Players in the chat room can write to each other, but the player list is blank. That still means there's no way to invite a player without a friends request.
Unfortunately the efforts to fix Vilshanka didn't make it any better. I just had a game where I had at least 3 cases of the UI bug, including one case where my Volksgrenadiers received my King Tiger's command panel.