a guide to starting with zoom breakout rooms instructions

breakout room.a guide to starting with zoom breakout rooms instructions. Zoom is a web conferencing application for video and/or audio conferencing and one of the best collaboration tools for remote teams The app allows you to hold unlimited appointments, make unlimited phone calls, and record calls or appointments.

One of the lesser-known Zoom features that you won’t find in Microsoft Teams or Google Meet is Zoom Breakout Rooms. Breakout rooms act as breakout groups in a physical workshop or workshop, allowing you to split a Zoom meeting into separate sessions.

In this guide, we’ll walk you through the process of setting up Zoom Breakout Rooms to help you understand the whole feature.

What is Zoom Breakout Room?

Zoom Breakout Rooms are standalone interfaces that a Zoom meeting organizer creates manually or automatically in order to host more meetings in a single session.

For example, if you are hosting a National Delegate Meeting on Zoom, you can create breakout rooms for different provinces or counties. You can divide delegates into several smaller groups depending on the county or province they represent.

The meeting organizer can host up to 50 breakout sessions in the central Zoom meeting room. Users can join Zoom meetings and breakout rooms from any compatible device or major platforms including Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, and iOS.

Before joining a Breakout Room, check that you are using a Zoom software compatible device and that Breakout Room is enabled in your settings.

1. To open a Zoom breakout room, enter Zoom.

How to set up the breakout room for zoom

1. To start the breakout room with zoom, log in to Zoom.

2. Click Settings under Personal in the left pane.

3. Go to the Meeting (optional) section of the Meeting tab on the right.

4. Click the Breakout Room option and make sure it is on. If it is disabled, enable it with the switch.

5. If you want to pre-assign attendees to breakout rooms, select the Allow host to assign attendees to breakout rooms when scheduling check box for this option.

6. To enable breakout rooms for members of a specific group, log in to Zoom as an administrator and click “Manage Users”> “Manage Groups” in the navigation menu.

7. Click the group name, and then tap or click Options. On the Meeting tab, make sure Breakout Room is enabled. You can also allow meeting organizers to pre-assign attendees to breakout rooms.

Note. You can enable Breakout Rooms for your own use by following the steps above. However, if Breakout Room is grayed out, it is likely locked at the account or group level. In this case, you need to contact your Zoom administrator for further assistance.

How to Create and Manage the Zoom Breakout Room

After you enable the Scale Breakout Room option, you can manage rooms and pre-assign participants to breakout rooms.

Note. Only the organizer of a Zoom meeting can assign attendees to breakout rooms. If you are the co-host, you can join and leave the breakout room that the host assigned you. The host can create up to 50 breakout rooms with up to 200 participants pre-assigned to rooms.

However, the number of participants in a room is limited by the capacity of the meeting, the number of breakout rooms created, and whether participants were pre-assigned or assigned during the meeting.

How to create a zoom breakout room on Windows / Mac

1. Start a Zoom meeting – instant or scheduled – and click Breakout Rooms.

2. Select the number of rooms you want to create and how you want to assign members to rooms. If you choose to automatically assign attendees, Zoom will split them equally for each room. Choosing the manual method gives you more control over which member you want to enter each room.

3. Click Create Breakout Rooms.

4. Breakout rooms will be created, but they will not start right away. You can manage rooms before they start by clicking Options to see more breakout room options. Select the options you want to use for breakout rooms:

• Automatically move all participants to breakout rooms.
• Allow participants to return to the main session at any time.
• Breakout rooms close automatically after x minutes.
• Notify me when time is up.
• Countdown after closing breakout rooms.

5. Click Open All Rooms to start breakout rooms.

6. If you chose to manually assign participants to breakout rooms, click Assign next to the room you want to assign them to.

7. Select the members you want to assign to this room, and then repeat the step for each breakout room you created. Once a participant has been assigned, the Assign button will be replaced by the number of participants in the room.

After you assign participants to breakout rooms, you can regroup the participants. Any attendees who are not assigned a room will remain in the larger meeting after the rooms start. You can also move or change participants between rooms, recreate rooms, add new breakout rooms, or delete rooms.

Note. Each attendee will receive an invitation to join the breakout room, and once they all go to their respective breakout rooms, the host will remain in the main meeting. If you are the host, you can manually join or leave any current breakout room.

8. The host can also pause rooms after a 60-second countdown by clicking Close All Rooms.

9. You (the host) can also broadcast a message to all breakout rooms to share additional information or time alerts while rooms are in progress. To send a message, go to the Meeting Management section and click the Breakout Rooms icon.
10. Click Send a message to everyone.

11. Press the blue broadcast button. The message will be shown to all participants in their respective breakout rooms.

How to pre-assign participants to breakout rooms

As the organizer of a Zoom meeting, you can pre-assign attendees to breakout rooms when scheduling a meeting.

Note. Participants must be signed in to their Zoom accounts so that they can be pre-assigned to the breakout room. Participants joining from the web client will not be pre-assigned to the breakout room. If you’ve enabled registration for a Zoom meeting and external attendees are registered for the meeting, you can assign them to breakout rooms during the meeting.

You can use the web portal or CSV file to pre-assign attendees to zoomed-in breakout rooms.

How to use the web portal to pre-assign people to enlarge the breakout room

1. Sign in to the Zoom web portal, click Meetings and schedule an appointment.

2. Select Pre-Assign Breakout Room under Meeting Options.

3. Click New Rooms.

4. In the pop-up window, click the plus sign next to the Rooms field to add a room.

5. If you want to rename a breakout room, hover over its name and click the pencil icon. Search for attendees by name or email address in the Add attendees text box and add them to the breakout room. You can add internal users using the same account, reorder participants in a room, move or remove participants, and delete a breakout room.

6. Click Save.

How to use a CSV file to pre-assign people to scale breakout rooms

1. Sign in to the Zoom web portal, click Meetings, and schedule an appointment.
2. Select Pre-Assign Breakout Room under Meeting Options and click Import from CSV.

3. Download a sample CSV file that you can fill in by clicking the Download button.

4. Open the CSV file and fill in the Pre-Assigned Room Name column with the name of the breakout room. The Email Address column will contain the email addresses of the assigned members.

5. Save the file. Drag it to the Zoom web portal and Zoom will verify that the email address has a Zoom account.
6. You can change the assignments that you have previously assigned to breakout rooms before the meeting starts. Log in to the Zoom web portal, click Meetings and select the meeting you want to edit.

7. Click View Details in the Breakout Room section.

8. Modify the breakout rooms as desired, then click Save.

9. Start a meeting with pre-assigned breakout rooms by going to the meeting controls and clicking Breakout Rooms. Click Open All Rooms to open breakout rooms.

Note. You can manually assign attendees using the chat room controls during a meeting mentioned in How to create and manage a scaled breakout room above. You can also start a whiteboard session in breakout rooms and invite participants to view and comment.

Easily host group meetings

Zoom Breakout Rooms is a free service from Zoom that works for multiple use cases, especially if there are many participants in the meeting. These meetings include focus groups, classroom meetings, or department meetings.

Have you hosted a Zoom meeting and used Zoom Breakout Rooms? Share your experience in the comments.

a guide to starting with zoom breakout rooms instructions

a guide to starting with zoom breakout rooms instructions