Using breakout rooms

Breakout rooms allow you to split your Zoom meeting up to 50 separate groups/ sessions. The meeting host can choose to split the participants of the meeting into these separate sessions automatically or manually, and can switch between sessions at any time.

• Up to 50 breakout rooms can be created
• Breakout room participants have full audio, video and screen share capabilities

Participants in breakout rooms can share screen without a host present.

The host can join one breakout room at a time, so screen sharing with all breakout rooms is not possible at this time. To share files and documents with participants, use the Chat feature to upload files. To share files with all participants who are already in breakout rooms, use the Broadcast tool to broadcast a message to all breakout rooms and share information with all participants.

1. Click breakout rooms in the meeting controls.
2. Click Broadcast a message to all, enter your message and click Broadcast.

Settings

Ensure that you have enabled Breakout Rooms in settings. The Breakout Room button will be added to the toolbar.

Creating Breakout Rooms

1. Click Breakout Rooms.

2. Select the number of rooms you would like to create, and how you would like to assign your participants to those rooms:

• Automatically: Let Zoom split your participants up evenly into each of the rooms.
• Manually: Choose which participants you would like in each room.

3. Click Create Breakout Rooms.

4. Your rooms will be created, but will not start automatically. You can manage the rooms prior to starting them by following the instructions below.

Options for Breakout Rooms

1. After creating the breakout rooms, click Options to view additional Breakout Rooms options.

2. Check any options that you would like to use for your breakout rooms.

• Move all participants into breakout rooms automatically: Checking this option will move all participants into the breakout rooms automatically. If this option is unchecked, the participants will need to click Join to be added to the breakout room.
• Allow participants to return to the main session at any time: If this option is checked, the participants can move back to the main session from their meeting controls. If this is disabled, they need to wait for the host to end the breakout rooms.
• Breakout rooms close automatically after x minutes: If this option is checked, the breakout rooms will automatically end after the configured time.
• Notify me when the time is up: If this option is checked, the host will be notified when the breakout room time is up.
• Countdown after closing breakout rooms: If this option is checked, the participants will be given a countdown of how much time they have left before being returned to the main room.

3. Follow the steps below to assign participants to rooms or click Open All Rooms to start the breakout rooms.

Assigning Participants to Rooms

To assign participants to your rooms, select Assign next to the room you wish to assign participants to and select 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.

Preparing Breakout Rooms

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.

• 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: Deletes existing breakout rooms and creates new ones.
• Add a Room: Add another breakout room.
• Open All Rooms: Start the rooms. All participants will be moved to their respective rooms after confirming the prompt to join the breakout room. The host will be left in the main meeting until manually joining one of the rooms. The participants (and the 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 participants will be asked to join the Breakout Session. The 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.

• 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, shown to the host and participants, and returns all participants back to the main meeting.

Ask for Help feature

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

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

Broadcasting a message to all breakout rooms

The host can broadcast a message to all breakout rooms to share information with all participants.

1. Click Breakout Rooms in the meeting controls.

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

3. The message will now appear for all participants in Breakout Rooms.

For more information (including some limitations), visit the Zoom support page: https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/206476313