Absolutely need breakout rooms for my training but also need to charge for registration.

[emelle]

I'm doing a 3-part public training session that absolutely requires access to breakout rooms which means that  I'm limited to 'meetings' but I also need to charge for this training so require payment functionality for participants to register and then provide registration confirmation along with a meeting link (like when registering for a webinar).  How can this be achieved?    Do I have to start out with it being a webinar and then switch it to a meeting closer to the live date?  What would be the impact to the participant?  To my training session? 

Any help would be very much appreciated on resolving this dilemma.

Thanks! 

[Ray_Harwood]

Welcome to the Zoom Community, @emelle.

As long as you are a Licensed (paid) Zoom user, you can require registration on Meetings.  There's no need to schedule a webinar then convert to a meeting.

If your 3-part meetings are on a regular schedule, you can use the Recurring field to set up all 3 meetings.

There is no payment feature for Meetings or Webinars.  Normally when I have a client that needs to charge for meetings or webinars, I set up registration and payment through Eventbrite, which transfers registration directly over to a linked Zoom Meeting or Webinar.

[emelle]

Hi Ray, 

Thanks so much for the quick response. 

My dilemma is the need to have breakout rooms while still charging for the event.  I appreciate your suggestion of Eventbrite but was hoping to avoid having to open an account, set up the interface and learn a new process in the short lead time we have.  This is why I was trying to keep the whole procedure contained within Zoom and wondering if it was possible to start the event as a webinar (can charge) but then change the event to a meeting allowing for the breakout rooms.

I will look into Eventbrite for future situations, sounds like an ideal solution but in the meantime...any chance my above option could work?  And how messy would it be?

With appreciation.

PS: any idea of providing breakout rooms for webinars is on the horizon?  I appreciate the concept of webinars being instructor lead but with the changes in training approaches over the last 2 years, enhancing it to allow more interactive features would be great.

[Ray_Harwood · Accepted solution]

I agree that going to Eventbrite needs to be well thought out in advance, and there’s a lot I like about Eventbrite – but nothing is perfect. 

I can’t tell if you want to start the meeting as a webinar and then change to a meeting in progress, or whether you want to make the switch before the session is started.

You can change a Webinar to a Meeting (and vice versa) before the event starts, but you can’t change while the Webinar is in progress. See this Zoom Support article for details:
https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/360042761551-Converting-meetings-and-webinars 

If you are looking for a webinar format to start, an option for you would be to set it up as a meeting (or convert a webinar to a meeting in advance) and lock down the settings initially to not allow attendees to unmute themselves, show their cameras, or engage in chat — and while I haven’t experimented much with it, i think starting in Focus Mode will give you as close to a Webinar look and feel as possible . It’s not quite as elegant as an actual Webinar, but worth setting up a test and see how it performs for you.

I’m not a Zoom employee so I can’t say what is or isn’t on the horizon, but I’ve heard some discussion about “Breakout Rooms in Webinars” that at least give me the sense that they’re thinking about it. You can help by submitting a Feature Request here:

Submit Feature Request here: https://www.zoom.us/feed 

[emelle]

Ray, again, I thank you for your consideration and response, I will try your set up recommendations. 

To clarify, I was suggesting starting by creating it as a webinar event so we could charge for registration and then, maybe a day before or the morning of the event, switch it to a meeting to enable the use of breakout rooms.  Before we market I'll have to set up a test and check that the breakout functionality is available after converting and also if any further registrations would be accepted once that switch was made, I expect it wouldn't.  From what I've read it confirmed that the original webinar link sent to the participants would still work to join the meeting.

Let's hope that Zoom sees the need for this as a webinar feature, I will submit a comment at the link provided.

Regards.

[Ray_Harwood]

And you’re already ahead of me on this, but the best recommendation I can ever give is “Test, Test, Test.”  That’s the only way to really know how it will work. Good luck — let me know how it works out!