Breakout rooms are subrooms that can be created within a meeting or training session. They are useful for splitting a large group into smaller groups that can talk or collaborate. Breakout rooms can be used in meetings and training sessions that have 200 or fewer people. Hosts can create up to 20 breakout rooms for a single meeting or training session.
For example, if you have 20 people in a session, you could create 4 breakout rooms and move 5 attendees to each room. In the breakout rooms, the attendees can speak to each other depending on the audio configuration. They can use the Chat pod, collaborate on a whiteboard, and share their screens. The host can visit all the Breakout rooms to assist and answer questions.
When work in the breakout rooms is complete, the host can end the breakout session and return attendees to the main room. Hosts are able to share what happened in the breakout rooms with everyone. If necessary, the host can return attendees to their same breakout rooms. If you use the room again, you can also reuse the breakout room layout and content. (However, the assignment of attendees to breakout rooms is not retained.)
When an audio conference is in progress, the number of breakout rooms cannot exceed the number supported by the audio provider. If in any of the breakout rooms the number of users exceed the maximum number supported by the audio provider, breakout rooms cannot be started.
Note:
Adobe Connect administrators can change pod, sharing, and other settings to adhere to standards for governance. These settings affect the layout of meeting rooms and what you can do in meeting rooms. For more information, see Working with compliance and control settings.
Note:
Breakout rooms in audio conferences that use universal voice do not have their own audio, just the audio from the main meeting room. If your organization requires that all online conversations be recorded, consider using the compliance and control settings to disable breakout rooms. See Working with compliance and control settings.
If an integrated telephony provider supports Adobe Connect breakout rooms, each breakout becomes a separate audio conference. When breakout rooms are closed, all attendees return to the main audio conference line automatically.
When using a non-integrated provider that supports audio breakouts, manually configure your telephony breakouts (using private audio bridges) to match the online breakout rooms.
If your provider does not support audio breakouts, instead use VoIP with computer microphones. A separate VoIP audio channel is created for each breakout room, allowing each to have separate conversations. Participants are automatically assigned the role of presenter in a breakout room, giving them full VoIP rights. When a host ends a breakout session, everyone returns to the main meeting room and VoIP audio channel.
Note:
If VoIP is not possible, attendees can use the Chat pod to communicate in breakout rooms.
Note the following behavior of the Video pod in Breakout rooms:
Force Presenter View option is not available in a Breakout room.
Force Presenter View setting is preserved before and after a Breakout room is used.
Everyone goes out of the Full Screen mode when a Breakout room is started or ended.
Hosts can use the default breakout room layout or design a new layout to use specifically with breakout rooms. Create a custom breakout room layout if you want to do preparatory work before sending content and people to breakout rooms. Creating custom layouts can help meetings go faster and be better organized.
The layout active when you click the Start Breakouts button is reproduced in all breakout rooms. For example, if layout 1 is active and you begin breakouts with three rooms, those three rooms use layout 1. If you change the meeting or training session to layout 2 and add breakout room 4, then breakout room 4 uses layout 2.
There are cases where you want to have different layouts for different breakout rooms. For example, different breakout rooms can contain different content or attendee exercises. In this case, create separate layouts for the breakout rooms and ensure that the desired layout is active when you click Start Breakouts.
You can create a breakout room during the Preparing mode, while a meeting is in-progress, without disturbing the layout of the participants. When a breakout session is started, the layout created in the Preparing mode is used.
If you want different content in each breakout room but do not require different layouts, prepare the rooms before attendees join the meeting or training session. First configure the number of breakout rooms required. Then, click Start Breakouts and move yourself from room to room, loading the required content into each Share pod. Then, end the breakouts. When attendees join and you click Start Breakouts again, the content is ready. (If necessary, you can also alter the layout and content of breakout rooms during a meeting.)
While in a meeting or training session, hosts can create breakout rooms and send attendees into the rooms.
Manually select an attendee name in the list (Control-click or Shift-click to select multiple attendees). Then, either select a breakout room from the pop-up menu, or drag attendees to a breakout room.
Automatically assign attendees to breakout rooms by clicking the Evenly Distribute From Main button
. (Attendees previously assigned to specific breakout rooms remain in those rooms.)
Before and after dragging attendees to different breakout rooms.
In breakout rooms, attendees are automatically assigned the role of presenter. They can share their voice, share content in the Share pod, modify whiteboards, and add text to the Notes pod. When attendees are returned to the main room, they revert to their prior status.
Note:
All attendees, even ones who sign in as guests, can download shared content in breakout rooms.
- Breakout room with attendees assigned as Presenters.
Note:
If you are recording a meeting or training session and send attendees to breakout rooms, the recording continues to record only the main room. Edit such a recording so that users watching the recording do not see an empty main room. For more information, see Edit a recorded meeting.
Hosts can broadcast messages to all breakout rooms. This feature can be useful if you have noticed one or more rooms have a similar question. It is a good practice to send attendees a warning message a few minutes before ending breakout sessions and returning them to the main room. This mechanism allows attendees to finish speaking, loading files, and working on the whiteboard before a breakout session ends.
Either with or without the Host present, use
the options in the Attendee Status View of
the Attendees pod. For example, ask a question and ask the attendees
to respond by using the status options Agree or Disagree.
For more information, see Communicate with training or meeting attendees.
Hosts in the main meeting room can see the status changes of any user in a BOR.
Hosts can conduct separate polls in each individual breakout room by placing themselves in the rooms and opening Poll pods.
For general information about polling, see Polling attendees.
Attendees in breakout rooms can ask hosts a question at any time, whether a host is in their breakout room or not.
- To verbally ask a host in the same breakout room a question, use the audio provided (VoIP or telephony).
- To type a question for hosts in the same breakout room,
use the Chat pod menu
to send a message to the host. The host can then respond in the Chat pod to the attendee alone or everyone.
- To ask all hosts in the meeting a question, type in the
Send Message To Hosts box, and then click the Send button
. The question appears to all meeting hosts in a small message box with the attendee’s name. Hosts can respond by entering the attendee’s breakout room and using the Chat pod.
If the Chat pod is available in the breakout room, use chat to communicate with others in your room only. You cannot chat with attendees in different breakout rooms.
For general information about using the Chat pod, see Chat in meetings.
Only hosts can end a breakout session. When breakout rooms are closed, all attendees are returned to the main meeting room.
After ending a breakout session, hosts can share the contents of a single breakout room with everyone in the main room.
After ending a breakout session, you can return attendees to the breakout rooms again. The configuration of rooms and assigned users remains in place for the entire meeting.
Note:
In the Pods menu, pods from breakout rooms remain available until you remove them in the Attendees pod.
- To remove all rooms, click the Attendees
pod menu
, and choose Remove All Rooms. To store pod content, select Save Pod Information For Future Reference, and enter a session name. (You can access saved pods from the Pods > Breakout Pods menu.)
- To remove an individual breakout room, including all
pods and content it contains, click the X button
to the right of the room name. The numbering of subsequent rooms is adjusted to ensure continuity.