Zoom breakout rooms might not be the most exciting feature on Zoom’s platform, but they’re definitely useful. In the age of hybrid work, breakout rooms offer companies an excellent opportunity to organize and enhance larger meetings.

With Zoom, you can split all the members of your Zoom Meeting into up to 100 separate sessions, allowing for focused discussions, brainstorming, and collaboration between employees.

Everyone can work seamlessly in smaller groups, and hosts can pull their staff back into the collective session whenever they like. Plus, breakout room participants still get access to all of Zoom’s essential features, from video and audio conferencing to chat, whiteboarding, and screen sharing.

Depending on your plan, each user will even be able to access Zoom’s AI assistant to help them optimize their breakout sessions.

So, how do you use, configure, and manage breakout rooms in Zoom? Here’s your step-by-step guide to getting started.

What are Zoom Breakout Rooms?

Zoom breakout rooms, just like the breakout rooms available on platforms like Microsoft Teams and Cisco Webex, allow the hosts of Zoom meetings to create separate groups within a larger conference, event, or training session. Zoom supports up to 100 breakout sessions per meeting and allows users to choose exactly how they want to split up the participants in each conference.

Zoom breakout rooms are included on every Zoom Workplace plan and subscription with access to Zoom Meetings. They include access to:

  • Messaging: Users can communicate via chat, video, and audio in a breakout room and share files and screens. Hosts can also broadcast messages to every breakout room at once.
  • Delegation options: Zoom meeting hosts can assign co-host statuses to employees during a meeting and give different team members various privileges for breakout sessions.
  • Notifications: Breakout participants can click the “Ask for Help” icon at any time in a session to invite the host to join a meeting for assistance.
  • Security: End-to-end encryption for Zoom Meetings is included within all breakout rooms, and each room gets its own unique meeting encryption key.
  • Insights: In the “participant” tab, hosts can see who is in each breakout session and what they’re doing, such as whether they’re sharing their screen, streaming video, or speaking.

How to Enable Zoom Breakout Rooms: The First Step

Breakout rooms are a core feature on every Zoom plan, with access to Zoom Meetings. However, the functionality you can access within breakout rooms varies depending on your plan. For instance, you can only create up to 100 breakout rooms with the Zoom Large Meeting add-on.

Additionally, users can only access the Zoom AI companion during breakout room meetings if they have access to a paid Workplace license with the AI companion included.

Before using breakout rooms in Zoom, you may need to enable the feature. To do this on an account-based level (for all the members of your team), you’ll need to:

  • Sign into the Zoom web portal with an administrator account.
  • Click Account Management in the navigation menu, followed by Account Settings.
  • Click the Meeting tab and the Breakout room toggle under Meeting (Advanced) to enable the feature.

If you want to enable Zoom breakout rooms for specific groups, you’ll need to sign in (again as an administrator) and click User Management followed by Groups in the navigation menu. Select the applicable group from the list that appears, then select the Meeting tab. Toggle the Breakout Room option on, and c “enable” to validate the change.

For individual users, all you need to do is sign into the Zoom web portal and then follow the steps outlined above to enable breakout rooms for yourself.

Options for Zoom Breakout Rooms

Whether you’re enabling breakout rooms for yourself, a group, or your entire team, you’ll be able to select specific “options” during the setup process. Options include:

  • Enabling hosts to assign participants to specific breakout rooms when scheduling a meeting.
  • Allowing hosts to broadcast text-based messages to all breakout room participants.
  • Enabling host voice broadcasts for all meeting breakout rooms.
  • Allowing hosts to create, delete, rename, and change breakout rooms during use.
  • Enabling hosts to view activity status of participants in sessions.

As an administrator, you can also click the “lock” icon to prevent other users in your company or group from changing these settings.

How to Create Breakout Rooms in Zoom

Once breakout rooms are enabled on Zoom, users can schedule them in advance or access them during a meeting. If the option is enabled, meeting hosts can pre-arrange meeting participants into rooms when scheduling the meeting. Hosts can pre-assign up to 1000 participants and 100 rooms.

To pre-assign users to breakout rooms, sign into the Zoom web portal, then:

  • Click Meetings in the navigation settings, followed by Schedule a Meeting.
  • In the Options tab, select Breakout Room Pre-Assign, then Create Rooms.
  • Click the + button to add new rooms to a setting.
  • Once you have your rooms select Add participants and search for employees with their email address or name.

You can save breakout room assignments for later use if you’re hosting recurring meetings. There’s also a handy option on Zoom to create breakout rooms based on the results of a poll.

Remember that only co-hosts and hosts can assign participants to breakout rooms. While you can allow users to choose their own room, this feature can only be enabled during a meeting.

Additionally, the number of participants you can assign to a breakout room will depend on your number of rooms. For instance:

  • 100 rooms: Up to 1000 participants (only with the Large Meeting Add-on)
  • 50 rooms: Up to 200 participants
  • 30 rooms: Up to 400 participants
  • 20 rooms: Up to 500 participants

How to Create Breakout Rooms During Zoom Meetings

To create breakout rooms during a Zoom meeting, simply start an instant or scheduled meeting with Zoom, and click on the Breakout Rooms icon, it’s a square split into four sections. Next, select the number of breakout rooms you want to create and how you want to assign participants to each room.

You can choose from:

  • Automatic assign: Allow Zoom to split your meeting participants up evenly.
  • Include co-hosts in assigning: Allow co-hosts to alter breakout room assignments.
  • Let participants choose: Give participants the option to select which rooms to enter.
  • Load pre-assigned rooms: Load previous room assignments on Zoom.

Next, click “Create,” and Zoom will build your breakout rooms, but they won’t start automatically. This gives you a chance to configure your breakout room options, such as:

  • Allowing users to choose rooms: Giving participants the freedom to select the room they want to participate in.
  • Allowing Main session access: Allow participants to move back to the main room whenever they want. If this is disabled, the host or co-host must end the breakout rooms first.
  • Move participants automatically: Automatically move all participants into their assigned breakout rooms when the rooms launch. You can also transfer all selected participants in a breakout room back into a meeting room when the breakout room closes.
  • Auto closing breakout rooms: Automatically end the breakout room after a defined number of minutes. You can also receive a notification when the time is up.
  • Setting countdown timers: Show participants how much time they have left in a breakout room before they’ll be returned to the main room.

Once you’ve configured your settings, click “Open All Rooms” to launch the session.

How to Use Breakout Rooms in Zoom: Preparation

Preparing Zoom breakout rooms for action is straightforward enough. By default, hosts and co-hosts are the only users allowed to assign participants to rooms. However, you can enable participants to give themselves to the rooms they want to use.

Once you assign participants to a room, you can also rearrange participants during meetings. Zoom offers various options, including:

  • Move to Select a room to move a participant to.
  • Exchange: Swap a participant in one room with an attendee in another.
  • Delete: Remove a selected breakout room.
  • Recreate: Recreate all previous rooms. You can also recreate breakout rooms with the same assignment arrangements as the ones you used previously. Plus, you can “recover” breakout rooms when you’re using the pre-assign feature.
  • Add: Create a new breakout room.
  • Open all rooms: Start all breakout rooms. This will automatically move all participants into their assigned rooms after they confirm they want to “join” the meeting.

Managing Zoom Breakout Rooms

Once your breakout rooms are running on Zoom, all participants will either be automatically moved into their assigned rooms or asked to join a breakout session. The host or co-host that launches the session will stay in the central meeting until they choose to enter a session.

Zoom will launch a breakout room window, split into two tabs. Here, you’ll see all the open breakout rooms, active participants, and the total number of participants. You can search through participants based on whether they’ve joined or not joined a breakout session.

Any participants who haven’t joined a room yet will feature the “not joined” tag next to their name.

Within the breakout rooms window, you can control parts of the meeting session, with options for:

  • Rename: Change the name of a breakout room
  • Join: Join a breakout room
  • Leave: Return to the main meeting room
  • Delete: Remove a specific meeting room
  • Broadcast: Send a message or broadcast microphone audio to all rooms
  • Add Room: Create a new breakout room
  • Close all rooms: Stop all rooms after a 60-second countdown.

Hosts and co-hosts will also have the option to assign unassigned participants to breakout rooms and move participants between rooms during the conversation.

During your meeting, you can also save breakout room assignments for future use. Users can save up to 10 assignments by clicking the three-dot “…” button and selecting “Save Breakout Rooms.”

Using Zoom Breakout Rooms

To join a breakout room as a participant on Zoom, you’ll usually need an invitation. This invitation will appear on the Zoom client, allowing you to join immediately or later. If you choose “later,” you can access the breakout room by clicking the square icon in your meeting controls.

If the host allows participants to select which breakout room to join, you’ll see a list of rooms created by the host, and you can join or leave these freely. Click the Breakout Rooms icon to find a list of all the rooms available and the participants in each one.

To join one of the rooms, hover over the number to the right of the room you want to enter and click “Join.” You can return to the main session anytime by clicking “Leave Breakout Room.” When a host ends a session, Zoom will notify you that the breakout room is closing, allowing you to re-enter the main room instantly or in 60 seconds.

Notably, you can also use breakout rooms with Zoom Rooms. Although you can’t initiate breakout sessions with Zoom Rooms, you can add people to breakout room participants from your Zoom Rooms appliance.

What Can You Do in Zoom Breakout Sessions?

Within a breakout session, you can also:

  • Share screens to all breakout rooms: Hosts and co-hosts can share their screens from the main session to all breakout rooms by clicking the “share screen” icon. You can also choose what you want to share and share sound with your video content.
  • Respond to requests for help: Hosts and co-hosts will receive notifications when participants click the “Ask for Help” button. This will allow you to join the directly participant’s breakout room directly assistance.
  • Select a breakout room: If the host selects this option, users can choose their own breakout rooms and move freely between them.
  • Broadcast messages and audio: If you need to share information with everyone in your breakout rooms at once, you can type a message or talk to all participants instantly as a host.
  • Leverage in meeting chat: Users can leverage the chat function within your breakout room to message other participants and share content, links, and ideas.
  • Search for participants: Hosts can rapidly move a person from one room to another within Zoom. You can search by name to find a participant if you have more than seven people in a meeting.
  • View participant status: If you want to see if participants are actively participating in a breakout session as a host, you can view their status in the breakout room list. This will show which participants use audio and video, reactions, and share the screens.

Hosts can also choose to “hop into a room” at any time to answer questions and set a timer to let users know when the breakout session will end in advance.

Making the Most of Zoom Breakout Rooms

Zoom breakout rooms are a straightforward way for businesses to take team productivity to the next level in meetings. They’re ideal for brainstorming and design sessions, icebreakers, mentorship, and training sessions.

I’ll leave you with a few quick tips to help you make the most of your breakout sessions:

  • Plan your meetings: With any meeting, preparation is crucial. Make sure your participants know why they’re going into breakout sessions and what the goals of the sessions are. If they need any resources to collaborate, ensure they have access to them in advance.
  • Get the conversation going: Consider using icebreaker questions in meeting rooms to get the conversation going. Or give each of your employees a specific task to accomplish when they enter a breakout room.
  • Set expectations: Don’t leave participants guessing at how long a breakout room will last. Let them know how long they’ll have to discuss things with their colleagues and use timers to keep the conversation on track.
  • Prepare for technical issues: Let your participants know what to do if they encounter technical issues or problems, such as using the “Ask for help” option. Consider using meeting room recordings to avoid losing any information.
  • Take full advantage of Zoom’s features: Make the most of Zoom’s features for file, screen, and content sharing, whiteboarding, and chat. Consider using the AI companion to enhance the quality of your meetings and boost productivity.

FAQs

Can you still do breakout rooms in Zoom?

Yes, breakout rooms are one of the core features offered in Zoom meetings. However, to take full advantage of the feature and create up to 100 sessions, you will need the large meeting room add-on. Admins will also need to enable Zoom breakout rooms to ensure users can access them.

Do Zoom breakout rooms have a time limit?

Breakout rooms won’t have a time limit by default, but you can set an auto-close timer for each session. This will allow you to control how long each breakout meeting lasts. You can also close breakout rooms whenever you choose.

Why can’t I see the breakout room option in Zoom?

If you can’t see the option to launch a breakout room in Zoom, this could be because the feature hasn’t been enabled. Alternatively, there may be an issue with the app. Consider uninstalling and reinstalling the Zoom application if you’re having trouble.

 



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