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Managing breakout rooms in a Session

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Breakout rooms are a convenient way to segment attendees within a Session room, streamlining the organization of interactive activities. This guide explains how to create and manage breakout rooms in a standard Session.

Important: To create breakout rooms within Sessions in a multi-track event, you must enable the Networking area. In a Webinar event, you must enable the People list option. 

Breakout room capacity and limits

Breakout room capacity limitations include:

  • 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.
Note: There is a limit of 45 people per Breakout room when creating the rooms, however, there are 5 excess slots that allow Organizers and Moderators to freely move between breakouts that have reached the 45/45 capacity.

Creating breakout rooms

To start a new breakout in a Session:

  1. Open the Host controls menu.
  2. Go to Breakouts Rooms and select + New breakout.
    ✔ A pop-up will prompt you to select the breakout settings.


  3. 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 the number of rooms you would like to create, and the attendees will be evenly divided into the correct number of rooms.
  4. 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. 
  5. Once you are happy with your settings, click Create breakouts. 
    ✔ Attendees will be sent to separate rooms after a countdown.

Important notes: 

  • All attendees in a Session are assigned to breakouts, including those not participating on screen.
  • Attendees are randomly assigned to breakouts. It's not possible to control specific room assignments for individual attendees.
  • When restarting breakouts, you have the option to reuse previous groups, meaning the same participants will remain in the same rooms. Note that we only save the audience data for 24 hours, so this option will not be available after that period. 
  • 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

  • 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 Arrow icon < to go back to the list of 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 can 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 receive a notification informing them that 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.

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