Using breakout rooms

Breakout rooms give us the opportunity to create a more interactive event with speakers and delegates. It is perfect for training/virtual classrooms and larger meetings.

You can schedule up to 50 rooms for a meeting.

With your standard ICAEW Zoom licence you can have up to 500 people split across the number of breakout rooms you decide on.

If your meeting has more than 500 people you will require the Large Meeting Add-on licence - this is a floating licence that you can specifically request - just speak to Top Rana in ITD.

Breakout room functionality

  • host to automatically or manually separate participants into different rooms or allow participants to choose their own room

  • host to rename your rooms

  • host to move individual participants around from room to room

  • host / co-hosts to jump between breakout rooms as they please

  • host to broadcast to the rooms

  • host to call partipants back to the main session

More detailed information about breakout rooms can be found on Zoom's support pages:

Before you start - check breakout rooms are enabled in your Settings

  1. Log into your Zoom account in a Chrome browser tab:

  2. Go to Settings on the left hand side

  3. Click Meeting (advanced)

  4. Click the toggle next to Breakout Rooms and choose Allow host to assign participants to breakout rooms when scheduling

Running and managing your breakout sessions during the meeting

  1. Launch your Zoom meeting


2. Click Breakout Rooms along the options at the bottom of the meeting. Sometimes this shows as 3 dots. Click that and you will get the option for Breakout Rooms.


3. Enter the number of breakout rooms you require (Zoom can do up to 50).

  • Decide whether you wish to assign automatically, manually or let your participants choose their own room.

  • Click Create

4. You will see all participants' Zoom names, assigned under each room.


5. Hover over the rooms to rename or delete them. Hover over individual participant names to move them into different rooms


6. Check you answer all the questions under the Options section before starting the breakout session(s)

7. Click Recreate to re-create and re-assign all participants into new rooms again. This is good if you need to randomise participants again.


8. Click Open All Rooms to send everyone to their breakout rooms

  • Each participant will get a notice to attend the breakout session

  • Participants will have a green dot next to their name if they are active in the breakout room

9. Once the breakout rooms have opened, options will change. Whilst participants are in their breakout room, you - the host - can send a message to all participants using Broadcast Message to All.

  • Participants will get a notification on their screen.


10. Click Close All Rooms to bring all participants back to the main room.

  • Participants will get a notification and countdown to return to the main room

NOTE: You are not able to record a breakout session on your account unless you join a room. We could allow co-hosts and participants to record the sessions on their local computers. But ICAEW does not recommend this for reasons of consent and confidentiality.