In large Zoom meetings, it quickly gets confusing – es­pe­cially because the free version of Zoom allows up to 100 par­ti­cipants and the Pro version plus add-on allows up to 10,000 par­ti­cipants. To discuss matters in smaller groups even in large meetings, Zoom offers breakout rooms for up to 50 separate meetings.

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Quick guide: How to create your own Zoom breakout room

  1. Enable the breakout room option in your account on the Zoom website.
  2. Open a breakout room in the desktop app.
  3. Allow par­ti­cipants to freely select rooms or assign them manually.
Note

To create breakout rooms, you must be using the desktop software. It’s not possible to create a Zoom breakout room via the mobile app.

What is a Zoom breakout room?

Whether in large video con­fer­ences, webinars, or other large-scale virtual events, if you’ve ever had to create a Zoom meeting or par­ti­cip­ated in a Zoom meeting with over 100 par­ti­cipants, you will know how difficult it is to hold con­struct­ive dis­cus­sions.

To enable small dis­cus­sion groups when there are fifty, a hundred, or even more par­ti­cipants in a meeting, Zoom provides breakout rooms (un­for­tu­nately not available in webinars). With a Zoom breakout room, you can open 50 separate rooms or meetings parallel to the main meeting. The host decides whether to assign all par­ti­cipants auto­mat­ic­ally or manually to breakout rooms or allow meeting attendees to enter and leave Zoom breakout rooms as desired. If the meeting is being recorded, it is important to note that only the main room can be recorded. Locally recording the breakout rooms is only possible with the host’s per­mis­sion.

How to enable the Zoom breakout room feature

Before the host and par­ti­cipants can use breakout rooms, the host or ad­min­is­trat­or must first enable the feature in the Zoom account. Proceed as follows:

  • Step 1: Log in to the Zoom Web Portal with your user cre­den­tials.
  • Step 2: Go to ‘Settings’ in the left sidebar.
  • Step 3: Under the ‘Meeting’ tab, scroll down to the ‘In Meeting (Advanced)’ section and click on the toggle for ‘Breakout room’ if the feature is disabled. This will give the meeting host per­mis­sion to split par­ti­cipants into breakout rooms.
Image: Option to enable a Zoom breakout room in the account settings on the Zoom website
You must first enable breakout rooms via the Zoom website before you can use the feature in the software.

How are Zoom breakout rooms created and ended?

To create a Zoom breakout room in the meeting as a host, follow these steps:

  • Step 1: Log in to the Zoom desktop app and create a meeting.
  • Step 2: Go to ‘Breakout Rooms’ in the sidebar.
  • Step 3: The menu window for breakout rooms will open. Under ‘Create _ breakout room’, select the number of separate rooms you want to create. Specify whether the al­loc­a­tion should be automatic or manual and whether you want to allow par­ti­cipants to choose their own rooms.
Image: Select the amount of breakout rooms you want in the Zoom desktop app
You can define how many rooms to open and how the par­ti­cipants should be divided up.
  • Step 4: Click on ‘Create’ when all settings are properly con­figured. A separate window will now open for breakout rooms that have not yet been started. Here you can make further changes to settings for separate rooms.
  • Step 5: To start the Zoom breakout rooms, click ‘Open All Rooms’. All par­ti­cipants will then be prompted to enter the ap­pro­pri­ate room.
  • Step 6: To delete a room, move the mouse over the room and click on ‘Delete’. If you want to stop all rooms, go to ‘Stop All Rooms’ in the menu.
Image: Various options for Zoom breakout rooms
The host has full control over all Zoom breakout rooms.

Prepare a Zoom breakout room

  • Step 1: In the breakout room menu, click ‘Options’ in the lower right corner.
  • Step 2: This is where you can decide whether par­ti­cipants are auto­mat­ic­ally dis­trib­uted to rooms, whether they can choose between rooms, or whether it’s possible to return to the main meeting.
  • Step 3: To set a time limit for breakout meetings, specify a time in ‘Options’ after which the breakout rooms auto­mat­ic­ally close and par­ti­cipants return to the main meeting. You can set a countdown so that par­ti­cipants know when the meeting is over.

Assign par­ti­cipants to a Zoom breakout room

  • Step 1: To be able to assign par­ti­cipants to rooms, you must first activate manual al­loc­a­tion.
  • Step 2: Next to the room name you will then find the option ‘Assign’. With this function, you can dis­trib­ute par­ti­cipants to rooms as desired. Par­ti­cipants that are not manually assigned a room will remain in the main room with the host.
Image: Function that enables the host to manually assign meeting participants to rooms
You can manually assign other par­ti­cipants to the different rooms.

How do users join a Zoom breakout room?

As soon as you start one or more breakout rooms, either all or only the par­ti­cipants that were selected manually receive an in­vit­a­tion to enter a room.

How do you switch between breakout rooms?

If par­ti­cipants are free to choose between Zoom breakout rooms, they can leave the breakout room by clicking ‘Leave Room’ at the bottom right. After leaving the room, users are free to join another room. The host can manually join rooms or stay in the main room.

How many par­ti­cipants can use Zoom breakout rooms?

Zoom allows up to 50 separate breakout rooms. The number of par­ti­cipants you can assign to a room depends on whether you specify the breakout rooms while the meeting is taking place or before the meeting starts. The number of par­ti­cipants in the rooms also depends on the number of rooms as well as the add-on for large meetings.

The following numbers of par­ti­cipants are possible for large meetings when you create breakout rooms during the meeting. Without an add-on, your meetings are a bit more limited regarding capacity.

  • 20 breakout rooms: Up to 500 meeting par­ti­cipants
  • 30 breakout rooms: Up to 400 meeting par­ti­cipants
  • 50 breakout rooms: Up to 200 meeting par­ti­cipants
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