How many Zoom rooms can we have at one time?

[jilanne]

We have an event with 220 attendees and want to have 8 Facilitators with 5 breakout rooms each.  If we give each Facilitator Admin rights, can we have all 8 sessions running at the same time on the same Zoom account?

We are planning to pre assign the break out rooms so once they are in their room, the Facilitator will be able to move them in and out of their breakout rooms. Would they all have to be on separate links?

Would we be able to then bring them altogether in one main room or would they need to leave their previous meeting to come back to the main one? 

Is this how you would set it up? I'm open to feedback on the best way to do it. We want to minimise the time it takes moving people in and out of rooms. 

[Ray_Harwood]

Hi, @jilanne,

Good to be planning early and asking questions!

Each Zoom Meeting would need to be on a separate paid account, assuming they are done simultaneously. Each Zoom Meeting would have its own Meeting ID, and therefore each one would have a separate Join URL.

However, assuming you set them up this way, you can preload the Breakout Room assignments – assuming you have each attendee’s Zoom login email address.

This Zoom Support article has lots of info on setting up Breakout Rooms – but there’s no substitute for making a couple of trial runs ahead of time.  The article is a little technical, and it’s easy to misunderstand what actually happens by just reading it, in some ways. 

https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/206476313-Managing-Breakout-Rooms 

With 220 people in 8 separate Meetings, that’s 27/28 per Meeting + Facilitator; broken down to5 Breakout Rims, it’s 5-6 per room.  If you don’t have 8 licensed users to host the Meetings, you’ll need to license a few people – the cost will depend on whether you’re on a Pro or Business account. 

[jilanne]

Brilliant thanks so much for your response. So if I am understanding correctly, we will be able to run 8 meetings as long as the 8 'hosts' or facilitators are licensed.  We don't have 8 licences yet but would plan to upgrade in or to accomodate this.

Thanks for that article - I will go through it and come back to the community if I have further questions.

[Ray_Harwood]

@jilanne -- Yes, you are correct.  A couple of side notes to help (hopefully!):

• Many organizations that do facilitated meetings like this have both a host and a facilitator.  The host takes care of technical issues, start the breakout rooms when requested by the facilitator, helps in general about Zoom issues.  This leaves the facilitator free to work more with people management, participant (non-technical) questions, etc.
• I have never seen a large breakout room pre-assignment go 100% smoothly.  There will generally be at  least one person, maybe more, who signs in with a different user account, and doesn't get sent to the Breakout Room when opened.  This will require someone to "move" them into the appropriate room.  If there's a host in each room, that person (if provided with the attendee/breakout room assignments for that Meeting) can take care of moving people where they need to be, while the facilitator "floats" from room to room observing and guiding, as appropriate.
• If there's a host and a facilitator, and they are all on one organizational account (business, education, etc.), then I recommend scheduling the Meeting by/for the host, and assigning the facilitator as Alternate Host; the limitation here is that both host and facilitator must be on the same organizational account and be licensed users.  Could be cost-prohibitive for small organizations.
• If your organization is small enough to be only on Pro accounts, adding these additional users would likely put you into the Business account category.  While those accounts are a little more expensive per month, there are some benefits; to me, the best one is that the Account Admin has the benefit of calling a Zoom Account Rep for assistance (Pro accounts are limited to submitting support tickets on the web site).

Hope that additional info is helpful!  Yes, come back to this thread with additional questions.

[jilanneholder]

Hi, I'm just coming back to this query I had regarding meetings and breakout rooms.

Is it possible to have 8 meetings on one account run at the same time? Would we need to be on a business account for that or would pro be sufficient? I'm assuming they would have to have different meeting links.

Also, if I am the owner of the Zoom account, am I able to set up all of these meetings under my account and then give other licensed members access to it? OR do they have to set up their own meeting on their own account? If I am able to set up these meetings with my account, am I able to go in and out of the meetings if they are running at the same time? 

The reason we want to do this is because each of the 8 meetings will have 5 break out rooms and they want to come in and out of their main meeting without having to involve the whole group.

[Ray_Harwood]

One user account can only have one active session (Meeting or Webinar) at a time. Even though you can schedule multiple simultaneous meetings, you’ll have to end one before you can start another. 

You’ll need 8 individuals with paid accounts.

A Zoom Event/Conference could accomplish this, but it’s a heavy lift to learn how to do it. 

[jilanneholder]

Ok great, that is how I thought it worked but just needed to double check it again.

One other option is to have them all in one meeting with  40 break out rooms. How long would it take to get 220 people back into the main room? The main reason we wanted to look at other options is that we thought it would take too long to get everyone back and forth from their breakout rooms. 

[Ray_Harwood]

First of all, be sure to read this Zoom Support article for details about Breakout Rooms:

https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/206476313-Managing-Breakout-Rooms

Joining and leaving Breakout Rooms does have some overall effect on the main room's performance, but I wouldn't think it would affect you that much.  I think the people-factor will cause more variation than the system will.

220 attendees - remember if you are on a Pro account, you'll need a Large Meeting upgrade.

[jilanne]

Awesome thanks for that. I'm sure it will be fine and easier to manage if it's all on one meeting. 

For the large meeting upgrade, would we need just one licence for that or do we need to get a licence for each facilitator? I was thinking that I could make them all Co-hosts and they would be able to go in and out of their breakout rooms.