The Unofficial Guide to Zoom Breakout Rooms
Virtual meetings became a hit during this pandemic. People were having several meetings in a day and attended a couple of webinars and online workshops during the past 19 months.
It may not be obvious for the attendees but those meeting hosts, moderators, facilitators, and presenters faced several challenges during these virtual meetups which primarily revolves around engagement among participants.
The good news is, Zoom keeps on finding ways to promote engagement during virtual meetings. A great feature to capture the attention and encourage more participation among attendees is the breakout rooms.
This is done by breaking down the group into smaller teams which can be more focused and personal. You can be comfortable sharing your thoughts and ideas in a group of 5 compared to the crowd of 50 or 100.
Breakout rooms can be a powerful tool for online planning sessions, workshops, and even for multi-speaker conferences. We will be sharing with you how to manage the breakout rooms seamlessly.
Enable Breakout Room in your Zoom Settings
To make sure everything will run smoothly, update the Zoom Desktop client to the latest version. As of this writing, it’s version 5.7.5.
You can enable the breakout room features only in the Zoom web portal. After you sign in, go to the settings and select the Meeting tab then proceed to the In Meeting (Advanced). You will find the Breakout Room option and click the toggle to enable it. Also, click the box to allow the host to assign participants to breakout rooms when scheduling.
Before we proceed, it’s important to be guided by the capabilities and limitations of the breakout rooms.
2. Now let’s open a Zoom meeting and create breakout rooms.
It is important to note that only the host and the co-host can launch the breakout rooms.
Since you already enabled the breakout room feature, the moment you start a Zoom meeting you will see the 4 small square-icon of the breakout rooms. Click that icon to start a new window to create the breakout rooms.
When creating the breakout rooms, you will be prompted with the 3 main options aside from the option to decide how many rooms you are going to create.
Assign Automatically
Let Zoom assign the participants to each of the rooms. Ideally, if you have a big crowd and you want to easily split them in the breakouts, this is the best option. Since you will be putting all the attendees in the breakouts, there may be some people who need not be included and you need to manually uncheck them. This is a little reminder just in case you’ll use this option.
Assign Manually
In this option, you will have the overall control as to who is going to be assigned in a certain room. You can easily move people or exchange participants across all rooms. Workshops and focus group meetings can greatly benefit from this setup.
Let Participants choose a room
This is self-explanatory! You just have to set the desired number of breakout rooms and launch it. Participants decide which room they want to join. This is applicable when you have a multi-speaker conference or a multi-room tradeshow and exhibit.
Before you finally Open All Rooms, there are some settings you need to review.
Are you going to allow participants to return to the main session any time? Do you want to set up a timer and close automatically the rooms after the countdown timer is finished? Do you also want to have a countdown timer after closing the breakout room?
A very important tip is to check the option to automatically move all assigned participants into the breakout rooms. This will save you and the participants the hassle and the technical issues in joining the breakout rooms.
Don’t forget that you can also add a room and rename the rooms depending on your preference.
Now you are ready to launch the breakouts by clicking the option to Open All Rooms.
3. Manage the breakout rooms
As a host or co-host, you can easily join and leave the breakout room. When you are the facilitator, it’s a good idea to visit each room just to check what’s going on in each room or if the participants have any concerns.
There is an option to broadcast messages to all after you open all rooms. Click that option to send a message to all participants in the breakout rooms. It could be an additional instruction or a reminder that it’s almost time and they need to wrap things up.
An additional feature to further improve the breakout room experience is the ability to share screen from the main room to the breakout rooms. This is a new feature. Make sure to update your Zoom version to fully maximize this cool feature.
After you launch the breakout rooms, a new screen sharing option will appear as shown below.
Any active shares in the breakout rooms will be replaced by the host’s/co-host’s share screen. If there’s active whiteboarding and annotation it will be saved before it’s replaced.
Take note that only the shared screen will be shown in the breakouts. The sound will not be included.
During breakouts, participants have the option to Ask for Help. The host/ co-host will be prompted to join the room where the request came from.
When the session ends, click Close All Rooms. If ever you want to start a new breakout session with a new set of people in each room, you can choose Recreate button.
One more thing, assigning participants in the breakout rooms is not only possible during the meeting but it can be done prior to the meeting.
There is a Breakout Rooms pre-assign option that is available in the meeting options when scheduling a meeting. Click that option and choose whether to create rooms by manually adding the participants’ email or upload a CSV file with the provided template.
Lastly, when recording the meeting take into account that it will only cover the main room but not the breakout rooms. A workaround is to allow a participant to record before launching the breakout rooms. If there’s a need, you can also assign a co-host in each of the rooms.
Have fun with the breakout rooms! Create more engagement and meaningful interactions with your teams and with all the people you will be meeting in the virtual space.
Share with us your breakout room experience. You may also reach us at https://www.jumpwiremedia.com/contact for a free 15-minute consultation and advice on your Zoom webinar and events.