Breakout rooms allow you to split a Zoom meeting into 50 separate sessions. The meeting host can choose to split the participants automatically or manually. See Managing Breakout Rooms for more information.
1. By default, Breakout Rooms are enabled in Settings. To view this setting, go to the Zoom Dashboard, Settings, In Meeting (Advanced).
2. Create Breakout Rooms. Once the meeting is started, select Breakout Rooms located at the bottom of the Zoom screen. If hidden, it will be located under the More option.
3. Review the Breakout Room options. Decide on the number of rooms needed.
- Assign Automatically: Zoom will split your participants evenly into each room.
- Manually: Choose which room to place the participants.
- Let participants choose. Participants select and enter room on their own.
4. Select Create to review Breakout Room options. Note: This will not open the Rooms.
- Hover over Room names to Rename or Delete.
- Select Assign to Move or Exchange participants.
5. Options. Choose the best options available for the meeting.
6. Recreate. Will return to the Create Breakout Room options. Recreate all Rooms: Deletes existing breakout room and allows new ones to be created. Recover to pre-assigned rooms: only available for pre-assigned breakout rooms.
7. Add a Room. Add another breakout room.
8. Open All Rooms. Start the breakout rooms. All assigned participants will be moved to the assigned rooms after the prompt to join. Hosts, co-hosts will remain in the main room.
Pre-Assigning Breakout Rooms
Split your meeting participants into breakout rooms when scheduling the meeting using a CSV file. Note: For the CSV file to work properly:
- Participants:
- Must have a free Zoom Basic or Pro account.
- Are signed into their Zoom desktop app with associated Zoom email.
- Have an updated version of Zoom.
- Host: Use the participant's email (associated with Zoom) when creating the CSV file.
See Pre-Assigned Breakout Rooms for more information.
1. Schedule a new meeting. Select Breakout Room pre-assign under Meeting Options.
2. Select + Create Rooms to begin creating room assignments.
3. Download a Sample CSV file. Open the file and begin adding the name and emails of the participants and assign each to a breakout room. Breakout room names can be changed. Note: Do not change any Column heading information.
4. Upload or Drag and Drop the CSV file to the scheduled Zoom meeting.
5. When the schedule Zoom meeting is opened, these Breakout Room assignments will be available. Note: If a participant was not added to the CSV file and they are in the meeting, their name will be placed at the top of the break-out room assignments and can be manually placed into a Room.
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