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(Pocket-lint) – We’ve all been there, on a Zoom call with a dozen other people and everyone is silent because those intimate conversations you normally have at a party with a close friend are now playing to everyone who are on the call, and that’s not that great.
One of Zoom’s business-oriented features is also one of its best when it comes to working in the office or when trying to celebrate the holiday season at home – the breakout rooms. This feature can divide a zoom with stacks of people into small groups of a few people where it is easier to communicate. Indeed, the application supports up to 50 small sessions.
It obviously has use in business, but we’ve heard of church and community groups using it as well, and we’ve even heard of a family using it to take kids, grandparents and parents out so they can all have a chat. with their respective peers. As the meeting host, you can create assignments of people to groups or do it randomly. You can also bring people together after the small groups have taken place.
Newsgroups must be enabled in your Zoom web portal – see below. And if you’re hosting the meeting, you need to be on the Windows or Mac Zoom app during your meeting to start the newsgroups. Basically you can only join a group but not configure them if you are on the mobile app.
Join a discussion group
If you are attending a meeting hosted by someone else, they will need to manage the chat room groups (unless they designate you as the host). You’ll see a pop-up request to join a chat room, unless your host has made it mandatory. You can choose to join later, in which case you will stay in the main meeting.
If you are in the newsgroup, you can either leave the newsgroup to return to the main meeting, or you can leave the meeting completely.
Click Join Chat Room.
Configuring zoom up so you can manage newsgroups
First of all, if you want to change this setting, you must be able to manage your account (so you must either be an administrator or have your own account).
Zoom
In the Zoom web portal navigation menu, click Account Management and then Account Settings. Go to the Chat Room option in the Meeting tab and verify that the setting is enabled. Be warned – this page has a lot of options, so you may need to research it. You may also need to confirm your choice – see above.
You can also click the checkbox to allow meeting hosts to pre-assign participants to breakout rooms.
Zoom
You can also click the checkbox to allow meeting hosts to pre-assign participants to breakout rooms.
Enabling newsgroups for a group
You can also choose to activate it for a specific group.
In the navigation menu of the Zoom web portal, click on User management and then on Group management. Click the name of the group, then click the Settings tab.
Go to the Chat Room option in the Meeting tab and verify that the setting is enabled.
Start discussion groups
When you are in a meeting, click Chat Rooms. Select how many rooms you want to create and how you want to assign your attendees to those rooms – this can be done:
Automatically – Zoom will distribute participants evenly in each of the rooms.
Manually – Choose the participants you want in each room. You will need to click Assign on each room when creating it and add people using the checkboxes.
We already did it automatically and it worked really well.
Zoom
Then click on Create workshops. Your rooms will be created, but participants will not join them until you are ready.
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In Options, you can choose to automatically move everyone to breakout rooms and even set a time limit for breakout meetings.
By clicking on Open all rooms, all users will then be invited to join their discussion groups, unless you have made them mandatory.
Pre-assign people to discussion groups
Discussion groups are random unless you pre-assign people – here’s how to do it before the meeting starts. You can only do this if the participants have a Zoom account.
Log in to the Zoom web portal. Click Meetings and schedule a meeting or edit an existing meeting. Make sure you’ve enabled Join before the host.
Then, in the Meeting options section, select Pre-assign chat room and click Create rooms. You can then assign people.
There is more on the ins and outs of assigning people here.
Written by Dan Grabham. Edited by Max Freeman-Mills. Originally published on .
