Breakout rooms in Zoom

Creating breakout rooms

Please note that regular attendees cannot create breakout rooms. This privilege is limited to the host and the co-hosts.

During a meeting | Before a meeting

During a meeting

While inside of a Zoom meeting:

  • Click "Breakout Rooms".
  • Select the number of rooms you would like to create and how you would like to assign your attendees to those rooms:
    • Automatically: Let Zoom split your participants up evenly into each of the rooms.
    • Manually: Choose which participants you would like in each room.
    • Let participants choose room: Participants can select and enter rooms on their own. 
  • Click Create Breakout Rooms.
  • Your rooms will be created, but will not start automatically.
  • Click "Options" if using Windows, or the gear icon if using Mac. This pulls up the breakout room options.
  • Enable any desired options, such as automatically closing breakout rooms after a pre-determined time or allowing attendees to return to the main meeting room at any time that they desire.
  • If the manual option for room assignment was chosen: Click "Assign" next to the breakout room that you wish to assign attendees to and then select the attendees that you want sent to that room.
  • Click "Open All Rooms" to begin the breakout room session.

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Before a meeting

In order to assign attendees to breakout rooms before the meeting begins, one must enable it in the settings.

  • Sign in to the University's Zoom portal.
  • Click "Settings" on the left side of the screen.
  • Click "In Meeting (Advanced)" and scroll down to "Breakout room".
  • Check the checkbox beside "Allow host to assign participants to breakout rooms when scheduling".
  • Click "Save".

Now that setting up breakout rooms before a meeting is enabled, the following is how to assign an attendee before the meeting starts:

  • Click "Meetings" and then click "Schedule a meeting".
  • Fill out the meeting information, attendees, and settings as one usually would.
  • Click "Show" at the bottom beside "Options" and then check the checkbox beside "Breakout Room pre-assign".
  • Click "Create rooms". The little plus sign beside "Rooms" on the next page allows one to add another room every time it is clicked.
  • In the "Add participants" bar, enter the email address of the attendee and click it to add them to the room.
  • When finished, click "Save" to go back to the "Schedule a meeting" creation page.

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Issues or Concerns? Please contact the Science Computing Helpdesk.