Pre-assigning breakout rooms is an excellent way to organize meeting participants before your breakout sessions begin. While there may be scenarios in which you require your meeting participants to choose their own breakout rooms, having the ability to pre assign rooms is great if you wish to have more control. In this article, we’ll dive into everything you need to know about pre assigning breakout rooms in Zoom. By the end of this article, you will know how to preassign breakout rooms in Zoom, and learn how to edit breakout assignments so you can prepare for your next Zoom meeting with ease. 

What is a Zoom breakout room?

Breakout rooms are sessions or micro meetings that break off from the overarching Zoom meeting that allow participants to meet in smaller groups. These groups are completely isolated from one another and have their own audio and video. While Zoom meetings are excellent resources that can be used to discuss topics at a high-level, breakout rooms allow participants to get granular and host more intimate conversations. 

Who can pre assign participants to breakout rooms on Zoom? 

In order to pre assign participants to breakout rooms on Zoom you must be the meeting host or co-host. As the host or co-host, you can only pre assign participants to breakout rooms if they have a Zoom account. If they aren’t an internal or external user, you can pre assign them to a breakout room by importing a CSV file. For scheduled recurring meetings with breakout rooms, the pre-assigned breakout rooms must be applied to all meeting in the recurrence. 

How to pre-assign participants using the web portal: 

1. Sign into the Zoom web portal.
2. Select Meetings in the navigation menu. 
3. Select Schedule a Meeting.
4. In the Options section, select the Breakout Room pre-assign checkbox, then select Create Rooms.
5. In the window, to the right of Rooms, click the plus button to add breakout rooms.
6. If you wish to rename your breakout room, hover your mouse over the breakout room name and select the pencil button. 
7. In the Add participants text box, search for internal participants by name or email address, or manually enter the email address of external users, and then press Enter. 

How to pre-assign participants using the CSV method: 

1. Sign into the Zoom web portal.
2. In the navigation menu, Select Meetings.
3. Select Schedule a Meeting.
4. In the Options section, select the Breakout Room pre-assign checkbox, then click Import from CSV.
5. In the pop-up window, click download. You can then fill out your CSV file. 
6. Open the CSV file with your spreadsheet software of choice
7. Fill in the Pre-assign Room Name column with the breakout room name, and the Email Address column with the assigned participant's email address. 
8. Save the file.
9. In the web portal, drag and drop the file into the Import Rooms and Participants from the CSV file pop-up window. Zoom will verify that the email address has a Zoom account.

Can I edit breakout room assignments?

The short answer is yes. You can edit breakout room assignments if you have already assigned participants to breakout rooms as long as you do it before the meeting begins. To edit your breakout room assignments, simply sign-in to the Zoom web portal, source the navigation portal, select Meetings, and select the meeting you wish to edit. Next, you will want to navigate to the Breakout Room section and select View Detail. Here you can edit the breakout room as needed. Click Save after you’ve completed your desired changes. 

Limitations for pre-assigning participants to breakout rooms 

• If you wish to pre-assign a meeting participant that is an external Zoom user, you must import users via a CSV file. 
• You can only pre-assign meeting participants that have a Zoom account and you must have their email in order to pre-assign them to a breakout room. 
• If you schedule recurring meetings, your pre-assigned breakout rooms will only apply if you originally specified that you wanted them to apply during all recurrences. 
• You can pre-assign up to 200 participants in up to 500 breakout rooms. If your Zoom account has additional capabilities, you can pre-assign up to 1000 participants to up to 100 rooms. 
• Only one set of pre-assignments can be configured per meeting. This means that you cannot store multiple sets of pre-assignments per meeting and instead must move forward with one list. While you cannot configure multiple pre-assignments per meeting, you can make adjustments and changes as needed. 

Can I edit breakout room assignments?

The short answer is yes. You can edit breakout room assignments if you have already assigned participants to breakout rooms as long as you do it before the meeting begins. To edit your breakout room assignments, simply sign-in to the Zoom web portal, source the navigation portal, select Meetings, and select the meeting you wish to edit. Next, you will want to navigate to the Breakout Room section and select View Detail. Here you can edit the breakout room as needed. Click Save after you’ve completed your desired changes. 

Are you ready to pre-assign participants to your next breakout room? 

Pre-assigning meeting participants to breakout rooms can seem like a monumental task, especially if you haven’t done it before. It's important to remember that despite pre-assigning participants to breakout rooms, you always have the ability to make changes and edit your lists down the road. Nothing is permanent and you can make iterations or changes as you see fit. 

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