Breakout rooms are a convenient way to segment attendees within a standard Session room, streamlining the organization of interactive activities. This guide explains how to create and manage breakout rooms.
Breakout room capacity and limits
There are some important capacity limitations you should be aware of before creating breakout rooms:
- Max number of breakouts that can be created: 75 rooms per Session
- Min number of people to create breakout rooms: 4 people (+ Organizer/Moderator)
- Min number of people per breakout: 2 people
- Max number of people per breakout: 45 people.
Creating breakout rooms
To start a new breakout in a Session:
- Open the Host controls menu.
- Go to Breakouts Rooms and select + New breakout.
✔ A pop-up will prompt you to select the breakout settings.
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Select if you'd like to organize the breakouts by:
- People per room: Enter how many people should be in each room and the attendees will be separated accordingly.
- Number of rooms: Enter how many rooms you would like to create and the attendees will be separated evenly into the correct number of rooms.
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In the Regroup after (minutes) field, set a time limit so that your attendees will automatically return to the main Session after a specified period of time.
Note: The maximum time limit for Breakout Rooms is 1 hour and cannot be extended once they have been created.
- Once you are happy with your settings, click Create breakouts.
✔ Attendees will be sent to separate rooms after a countdown.
Important notes:
- Attendees are randomly assigned to breakouts. It's not possible to control specific room assignments for individual attendees.
- Additionally, this feature assigns all attendees to breakouts, including those who are passively observing without sharing their audio and video.
- The Organizer/Moderator will remain in the main Session and will not be sent to a breakout room. If there is more than one Organizer or Moderator in the Session, only the creator of the Breakout Rooms will remain in the main Session and the others will be randomly assigned to a room.
- Although the main Session is set up as moderated, attendees will be able to freely share their audio and video within breakout rooms.
- If someone is joining late, the system will automatically assign them to a breakout room.
Managing breakout rooms
Once attendees are in the designated breakout rooms, the Host controls menu will display a red tag with the number of rooms created and you will see the following actions:
- Regroup
- View Rooms
- Message All
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To bring everyone back to the main room, click Regroup.
✔ You will be prompted to confirm your choice. -
To browse through the rooms, click View Rooms.
✔ A panel with the list of rooms opens. See how many people are in each room by looking at the number in the red circle.Click on one of the rooms to explore the list of attendees within each breakout:
- Click the Arron icon < to go back to the list of the rooms or click the Cross icon x to return to the video feed.
- Click Join Breakout to enter the breakout room and chat with attendees. Within a breakout, click Return to Main to come back or Breakouts to view other rooms.
Note: Only Organizers and Moderators have the option to move around different Breakout rooms. Attendees will always be limited to the same room. -
To send a message to all rooms, click Message all.
✔ A pop-up where you enter a message opens. When ready, click Send.
Your message will be posted in the chat in each breakout room and everyone will get a notification informing the moderator has sent a message.
Breakout rooms analytics
There are no dedicated reports on breakout rooms. However, you can view which attendees joined which breakout in the Attendee log report.
Recording breakout rooms
Individual breakouts are not included in the Session recording. When viewing the recording, you will only see the main Session where the creator of the breakout remains.
Attendee experience
To learn more about attendee experience within breakout rooms, refer to our article on Navigating breakout rooms in a Session.