Preassigning Breakout Rooms

Pre-assigning breakout rooms is possible, but is very confusing and challenging to get right. Therefore, it is a tool that only advanced Zoom users should attempt.

Media Services strongly recommends that you avoid pre-assigning breakout rooms whenever possible and instead assign the rooms during the meeting.

If you MUST pre-assign breakout rooms, here are some tips (these tips assume advanced knowledge of Zoom):

1. Pre-assign SCU attendees using their scu.edu email address.
2. In order for pre-assigning breakout rooms to work, the email address you used to pre-assign someone to a room MUST match the email address they use to join your meeting. Therefore, it is REQUIRED for pre-assigned breakout rooms that you use Only authenticated users may join or Registration because these are the only ways to connect a participant to an email address.
• If using Only authenticated users may join, SCU attendees must join with their SCU Zoom account.
• If using Registration, inform participants of the email you expect them to use to register; for example, if all participants have an SCU Zoom account, instruct them to use their scu.edu email to join
• If using Registration on a recurring meeting, you must select Attendees need to register for each occurrence to attend
3. Only people with existing Zoom accounts can be pre-assigned to breakout rooms.
4. The only way to pre-assign members from a different Zoom account is to use the Upload a CSV option. If using this option, the CSV MUST be uploaded as you are creating the meeting. The CSV may not save if you attempt to add it later.
• Have someone with a Teacher role in the course download the Canvas grade book to get the list of users to copy/paste in the CSV
5. Expect some participants to end up in the wrong rooms. Ensure that you as the host are prepared to adjust assignments, or pass the host role to someone else to allow them to adjust the assignments (the host role can be passed back or reclaimed once this is done). Note that co-hosts cannot manage breakout rooms.
6. No more than 200 participants can be pre-assigned to breakout rooms, regardless of the capacity of the meeting.
7. If someone joins the meeting while the breakout rooms are in session, even if the person was pre-assigned, they won't be sent into a breakout room and will be sitting in the main session. To mitigate this, create 1 fewer breakout room than you intend to use, and leave some participants unassigned so that the main session is effectively one of the breakout rooms. That way, someone is there if a person joins late.
8. Refer to Pre-assigning participants to breakout rooms Zoom Help Center article for in-depth instructions on how to pre-assign breakout rooms.
9. Refer to Manage breakout Rooms Zoom Help Center article for instructions on how to manage breakout rooms