Breakout rooms are one of the most engaging community engagement tools. It's essentially an enabler for smaller groups to get together and brainstorm/chat/learn with the same objective. It's also the most essential part of community networking.

Here are few tips to use Zoom breakout rooms:

‍

Enable Zoom Breakout Rooms :

Sign in to Zoom from your browser. Go to settings → In Meeting (Advanced). Enable breakout rooms.

‍

Zoom Breakout Room

Pre-assign breakout rooms :

• Ensure that the “Allow host to assign participants to Breakout Rooms when scheduling” option is enabled.
• When scheduling a new meeting, navigate to Meeting Options and enable the “Breakout Rooms pre-assign” option.
• Select "Create Rooms" and assign participants manually using their email address or “Import from CSV,” which provides you with a CSV template to which you can add your Breakout Rooms and participants.
• Click on the Breakout Room of your choice and then click the pencil icon, which will allow you to rename the room.

Pre-assign

Creating breakout rooms within a meeting :

• Automatic vs. manual room creation – Create your Breakout Rooms automatically, placing participants into rooms randomly or placing them into their pre-assigned rooms. Manual room creation will allow you to create each room and assign participants to each room individually.

Explore Advanced Features :

• Set a timer – Put your Breakout Rooms on a timer that forces everyone to return to the main session when the timer expires. This option is great for group activities or brainstorming sessions.
• Countdown after closing Breakout Rooms – Facilitates a visible countdown to when they will return to the main session, giving participants the time they need to wrap up the discussion.
• Allow participants to return to the main session at any time – This option gives participants the ability to return to the main session without any time constraints.

Read up more about advanced features on this blog.

‍