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.
Although Zoom Support has good information on managing breakout rooms, we wanted to highlight a few key points and limitations for you here.
To Create Breakout Rooms During your Zoom Meeting
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During your meeting, from your Zoom taskbar, select Breakout Rooms.
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Enter the number of rooms you want to create.
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Choose the method for assigning participants.
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Select Create.
Enable Option: Allow Participants to Join Breakout Room
As a best practice, TLP recommends selecting the option to Allow Participants to Choose Room. You also can manually move participants around to different rooms before opening the rooms, rename rooms, etc.
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Select Open All Rooms.
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Once rooms are open, participants can no longer hear who is in the main room.
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You can Send Announcement or Join the individual breakout rooms to help facilitate.
Limitations
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.
| |
Host |
Co-Host |
| Assigning*, starting, and ending breakout rooms |
✔ |
✔ |
| Move between breakout rooms |
✔ |
✔ |
| Broadcast message to all |
✔ |
✔ |
| Notified of Requests for Help |
✔ |
|
* While both the host and any co-hosts have the ability to assign participants to breakout rooms, only the first submitted set of assignments will be accepted upon clicking Open All Rooms.
Users joined into the Zoom meeting from the Zoom Mobile App or H.323/SIP devices can participate in breakout rooms, but cannot manage them.
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.
You can create up to 50 breakout rooms. The maximum number of participants in a single breakout room depends on the meeting capacity, number of breakout rooms created, and if participants are assigned during the meeting or before the meeting.