Breakout Rooms

Overview

Breakout rooms allow you to split your Zoom meeting in up to 50 separate sessions. The meeting host or co-host can choose to split the participants of the meeting into these separate sessions automatically or manually, or they can allow participants to select and enter breakout sessions as they please. The host or co-host can switch between sessions at any time.  

By default, only the host or co-host can assign participants to breakout rooms. They can choose to allow participants to choose their own room, but this must be done in the meeting when launching the breakout rooms. 

If the meeting is being cloud recorded, it will only record the main room, regardless of what room the meeting host is in. If local recording is being used, it will record the room the participant who is recording is in. Multiple participants can record locally. 

Assigning Participants to Rooms

To assign participants to your rooms, select Assign next to the room you wish to assign participants to and select the participants you want to assign to that room. Repeat this for each room.

Once a participant has been assigned (manually or automatically), the number of participants will show in place of the Assign button.

After manually or automatically assigning participants to rooms, you can rearrange the participants. Participants who are not assigned to breakout sessions will remain in the main meeting when the rooms are started. Hover over the participant or room for these options:

• Move to (participant): Select a room to move the participant to.

• Exchange (participant): Select a participant in another room to swap the selected participant with.

• Delete Room: Delete the selected room.

• Recreate: 

  • • Recreate all Rooms: Deletes existing breakout rooms and allows the host/co-host to create new ones. 

    • Recover to pre-assigned rooms: Recreate the breakout rooms with the pre-assigned arrangement. This is only available if using the pre-assign breakout rooms feature.  

• Add a Room: Add another breakout room.

• Open All Rooms: Start the rooms. All assigned participants will be moved to their respective rooms after confirming the prompt to join the breakout room. If allowing participants to choose their own room, they can open the list of rooms and choose which to join. The host, or co-host that launched the breakouts and the original host, will be left in the main meeting until manually joining one of the rooms. The participants (and the host/co-host when manually joining a room) will see the following message shown when joining the breakout room.

Managing Breakout Rooms in Progress

Once the breakout rooms have been started, the assigned participants will be asked to join the Breakout Session. The host, or co-host that launched the breakouts and the original host, will stay in the main meeting until joining a session manually. If a participant has not joined the session yet, it will be noted by (not joined) next to their name. You can click these options in the breakout rooms window:

• Join: Join the breakout room.

• Leave: Leave the room and return to the main meeting (only shows when in a breakout room).

• Close All Rooms: Stops all rooms after a 60 second countdown, which is shown to the host, co-hosts, and participants, and returns all participants back to the main meeting.

Responding To Requests For Help

Participants in breakout rooms can request that the meeting host join their meeting by clicking Ask for Help.

You will be prompted to join the room where the request originated from. Click Join Breakout Room to join the room.

By default, only the host will be notified of Request for Help.  

Broadcasting a Message To All Breakout Rooms

The host or co-hosts can broadcast a message to all breakout rooms to share information with all participants. This can be done from the main session or from within a breakout room. 

1. Click Breakout Rooms in the meeting controls.

2. Click Broadcast message to all, enter your message, and click Broadcast.

3. The message will now appear for all participants in breakout rooms.

Additional information via Zoom: Managing Breakout Rooms

Breakout Room Capabilities for Host and Co-Host