Pre-assigning participants to Breakout Rooms
As a meeting host, you can pre-assign your meeting participants into Breakout Rooms when scheduling the meeting. This can be useful if you already know how you want to split up your participants.
Prerequisites:
- Enable Breakout Rooms in your meeting settings. For further information, refer to the Recommended Settings for Using Zoom for Teaching guide.
- Meeting host: Zoom desktop client for Windows or Mac, version 4.5.0 or higher. For further infromation, refer to the Installing Zoom guide (by ITS).
Note: If you start the meeting from the Linux client or Zoom Mobile App, you will not be able to see your breakout rooms with pre-assigned participants.
- When joining a meeting with pre-assignments, participants need to be signed in to their Zoom account for pre-assignments to be applied. Refer to the Recommended Settings for Using Zoom for Teaching guide to ensure you have enabled the Only authenticated users can join meeting setting.
Limitations:
- You can only pre-assign participants that have a Zoom account (ie. have logged into Zoom before).
Pre-assigning Breakout Rooms for meetings scheduled via Learn.UQ
- Schedule your meeting as per the Schedule a Zoom meeting via Learn.UQ guide.
Tip: You must turn on the Only signed-in users with specified domains can join meetings option to ensure students sign in with their UQ credentials.
- Once scheduled go to https://uqz.zoom.us
- Login with your UQ username and password.
- Click on Meetings.
- Locate the meeting and click on the Topic Name to access the Manage screen.
- Click on the Edit this Meeting button.
Warning: If you are editing a recurring meeting you must choose to edit All the meetings.
- Check the Breakout Room pre-assign checkbox.
Option 1: Import from CSV
- Click on the Import from CSV link.
- Click on the download link to download a copy of the CSV template.
- Open the downloaded CSV file.
Tip: Do not edit the headings on the 2 columns, they must remain unedited.
- In column A, enter the name of the Pre-assigned Breakout Room. If you wish to have 5 students/staff in the same Breakout Room you will need the same Pre-assigned Breakout Room name on five (5) rows.
- In column B, enter the student's email address next to the desired Pre-assigned Breakout Room. The email address needs to be in the format s1234567@student.uq.edu.au for students and f.lastname@uq.edu.au for staff.
Note: Ensure there are no additional characters, i.e. spaces in the cells, or the Breakout Room participants might not be organised correctly.
Tip: You can download your class lists from Allocate+ which contains the students' email address in the required format.
- Save the document as a CSV file.
- Return to your web browser and use the Drag & Drop or click on the browse link to attach your Pre-assigned Breakout Room file.
- Once the file has uploaded your Pre-assigned Breakout Rooms will appear. Click on each room to see the list of student/staff emails that are associated with that room.
- Hover over a student/staff email address and click on the Move to button to change the allocated room or click on the Remove button to delete them from that room.
- Click on the Save button.
- If required, click on the Edit link to access the Breakout Rooms.
- Finish setting up any other meeting settings then click the Save button.
Option 2: Create Rooms
- Click on the + Create Rooms link.
- Click on the + button in the left column to add a room.
- Click on the name in the right column to change the name of the room.
Tip: The first room will be called Breakout Room 1 and each subsequent room will increase the number.
- Click on the Add participants box and type the name of a participant.
- Once the name is located click on the name to add it to the room (it will automatically convert to the participant's email address).
Warning: UQ's directory is extensive and it may not locate the participant's name or may present multiple options for a single name. If this is the case use their email address ie. s1234567@student.uq.edu.au for students and f.lastname@uq.edu.au for staff.
- Repeat steps 4 and 5 to add additional participants to the room.
- Click on the + button in the left column to add an additional room.
- Repeat steps 4 to 6 to add the participants.
- Hover over a student/staff email address and click on the Move to button to change the allocated room or click on the Remove button to delete them from that room.
- Click on the Save button.
- Finish setting up any other meeting settings then click the Save button.
Pre-assigning Breakout Rooms for meetings scheduled via Zoom web interface
- Login to https://uqz.zoom.us
- Click on Meetings.
- Click on the Schedule a New Meeting button.
- For further information on scheduling a new meeting, refer to the Organising a Zoom meeting guide (by ITS).
Tip: You must turn on the Only signed-in users with specified domains can join meetings option to ensure students sign in with their UQ credentials.
- Check the Breakout Room pre-assign checkbox.
Option 1: Import from CSV
- Click on the Import from CSV link.
- Click on the download link to download a copy of the CSV template.
- Open the downloaded CSV file.
Tip: Do not edit the headings on the 2 columns, they must remain unedited.
- In column A, enter the name of the Pre-assigned Breakout Room. If you wish to have 5 students/staff in the same breakout room you will need the same Pre-assigned Breakout Room name on five (5) rows.
- In column B, enter the student's email address next to the desired Pre-assigned Breakout Room. The email address needs to be in the format s1234567@student.uq.edu.au for students and f.lastname@uq.edu.au for staff.
Note: Ensure there are no additional characters, i.e. spaces in the cells, or the Breakout Room participants might not be organised correctly.
Tip: You can download your class lists from Allocate+ which contains the students' email address in the required format.
- Save the document as a CSV file.
- Return to your web browser and use the Drag & Drop or click on the browse link to attach your Pre-assigned Breakout Room file.
- Once the file has uploaded your Pre-assigned Breakout Rooms will appear. Click on each room to see the list of student/staff emails that are associated with that room.
- Hover over a student/staff email address and click on the Move to button to change the allocated room or click on the Remove button to delete them from that room.
- Click on the Save button.
- If required, click on the Edit link to access the Breakout Rooms.
- Finish setting up any other meeting settings then click the Save button.
Option 2: Create Rooms
- Click on the + Create Rooms link.
- Click on the + button in the left column to add a room.
- Click on the name in the right column to change the name of the room.
Tip: The first room will be called Breakout Room 1 and each subsequent room will increase the number.
- Type in the participant's name in the Add participants textbox.
- Once the name is located click on the name to add it to the room (it will automatically convert to the participant's email address).
Warning: UQ's directory is extensive and it may not locate the participant's name or may present multiple options for a single name. If this is the case use their email address ie. s1234567@student.uq.edu.au for students and f.lastname@uq.edu.au for staff.
- Repeat steps 4 and 5 to add additional participants to the room.
- Click on the + button in the left column to add an additional room.
- Repeat steps 4 to 6 to add the participants.
- Hover over a student/staff email address and click on the Move to button to change the allocated room or click on the Remove button to delete them from that room.
- Click on the Save button.
- Finish setting up any other meeting settings then click the Save button.
Using pre-assigned Breakout Rooms
Starting pre-assigned Breakout Rooms
- Start your Zoom meeting. For further information, refer to the Start a scheduled meeting as the host (Zoom) guide.
- Click on the Breakout Rooms button.
- Your pre-assigned Breakout Rooms will appear on the screen and list any participants that are in the meeting under each assigned room.
Note: You will only see the assigned participants that have joined the meeting prior to you clicking on the Breakout Room button.
- Click on the Open All Rooms button to start your Breakout Rooms.
- For further information Managing and Moving between Breakout Rooms, refer to the Managing Video Breakout Rooms (by Zoom) and Moving between Breakout Rooms guides.
Recover pre-assigned Breakout Rooms
Note: This process is used if participants join your meeting after you have started your Breakout Rooms or if you want to use them a second time in the meeting.
- Click on the Breakout Rooms button.
- Click on the Recreate button.
- Click on the Recover to pre-assigned rooms from the drop-down list.
- Click on the Yes button to confirm recovery to the pre-assigned Breakout Rooms.
- Click on the Open All Rooms button to start your Breakout Rooms.
- For further information Managing and Moving between Breakout Rooms, refer to the Managing Video Breakout Rooms (by Zoom) and Moving between Breakout Rooms guides.
- Add a Zoom Recording to Learn.UQ (Zoom Cloud Recordings)
- Add a Zoom Recording to Learn.UQ
- Add a virtual background
- Generate report of meeting participants
- Managing Breakout Rooms
- Polling in a Zoom meeting
- Pre-assigning participants to breakout rooms
- Publishing a Zoom recording to Echo360
- Reactions in a Zoom meeting
- Running interviews via Zoom
- Using Zoom tips
- Virtual Classroom (Zoom) FAQ
- Virtual Classroom Tips and Tricks
- Zoom Meetings via Learn.UQ
- Zoom Recommended Settings
- Zoom waiting rooms for online exams