Pre-assign and Auto-assign breakout rooms

[LauraRnicasio]

We would like to pre-assign 10 individuals to each of 10 breakout rooms, and then, when we have started the meeting, have Zoom assign all the rest of the people to the rooms randomly. Will that be possible to do? The main need is to ensure that each of the rooms has a person we have identified as facilitator (not a co-host.). We don't know in advance who the rest of the participants will be. Thanks.  (PS: I've seen this similar question on this forum twice before and so far, unanswered.)

[Not-the-Llama]

Hello @LauraRnicasio!  Here is a video on How to Pre-Assign Breakout Rooms.  This video will cover the setting for getting your 10 breakout rooms created and your facilitators assigned to each room ahead of the meeting. 

Additionally, you will want to ensure the settings in your Zoom portal also has "Allow host to create, rename, and delete breakout rooms when rooms are open" checked.  This will allow you to assign attendees to the rooms once the meeting has started. I hope this helps!

[LauraRnicasio]

sorry it has taken me so long to see this. (I thought I'd get a notification.) It seems from what you are saying that I would need to manually assign the remainder of the attendees to the break-out rooms. Is that correct? That is, the 'auto-assign' feature will not be an option once some folks have been pre-assigned? That would then take quite a while with 100 people to manually assign. Any suggestions are appreciated.

[TinaKuo]

Hi @LauraRnicasio , I am trying to do the same thing for an event with about 160 in July. Wondering if we can randomly assign the rest of the participants who are not pre-assigned.

[TinaKuo · Accepted solution]

Hi @LauraRnicasio , it seems like the solution is to pre- assign the 10 as cohosts so they don't get sent to a breakout room, then randomize breakout rooms for the 100 participants, after that manually assign the 10. One of my co-workers who runs events suggested this and I verified it with a Zoom support agent. Hope this helps!

[LauraRnicasio]

Thanks. It's a start. however, my experience is that co-hosts do get put into breakout rooms when they are created randomly, unless there is a setting I don't know about that keeps that from happening.  Otherwise, yes, that solution would work.  Have you tested this or other options for your July event?

[LauraRnicasio]

Oh, ignore my other post. I just saw this option:

"Include co-host(s) to breakout rooms: Disabled by default, you can include any co-host(s) in the automatic assignment of breakout rooms."