Breakout Rooms and Whiteboards

[LK1]

Good morning,

In our upcoming training sessions, we will have participants moved into breakout rooms. Once there, we would like them to have the ability to open a whiteboard (like using a flipchart) to gather their group discussions, and then have the ability to save and then share their whiteboards (like flipchart paper) with everyone once they return to the main room. Is this possible? and if so, how is this achieved?

Thank you

[kjhartma]

In a meeting, under the security button, you have the option to allow participants to share screen and annotate over content.  From what I've seen and tested, you need these options checked to allow people to share screen and annotate in a breakout room, and must have them checked before you send them into a breakout room: https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/360041848151-In-meeting-security-options

You could instead just allow co-hosts to share screen and participants to annotate instead of letting everyone annotate and share screen if there are any Zoombombing concerns.

I'm not sure if this needs to be on for everyone or just hosts/co-hosts, but your users might need to turn on annotations and whiteboard in their individual user settings as well:  https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/4409894568845-Enabling-or-disabling-annotation-tools-for-m...

and https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/115005706806-Using-annotation-tools-for-virtual-meeting-co...

As host you must allow users to save annotated content for the save option to appear for them.

Whiteboard - https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/360060899712-Enabling-Whiteboard

and https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/205677665-Sharing-a-whiteboard

Note that only the participant or host that started sharing the whiteboard has access to create and switch pages.

Somewhere a user should be able to find an option to save their annotation or whiteboard as either a PNG or PDF.  From there once back in the main room, you can allow that person to share their screen, either via the Security button (again, this allows everyone in the meeting the ability to share their screen), or by letting those who saved the whiteboard be a co-host.

[AndyHind21]

HI LK1

I have exactly the same issue...did you get it sorted?  I'm OK with allowing them to use whiteboards in the breakout rooms but couldn't find a way of having them share this back in the main room.

Thanks

[kjhartma]

At the very least, the host has to have the whiteboard option turned on, and have the option to allow to save selected as well.  Not sure if all participants do or not, but host definitely would.

Or perhaps the person using the whiteboard in breakout room can take a screen shot and save that to their machine?

From there, I think you have a couple options for sharing content back in the main room:

• Promote the person who saved the content to co-host, which should allow them to share their screen, in which case they can share the saved whiteboard for all to see.
• Have the person transfer the saved file to the host of the meeting via the meeting chat.  The host could download the file and then share it via shared screen. - https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/209605493-Sending-a-file-in-meetings-and-webinars

[Eva_K]

Hello,

Hello,

All of this works if you have tech savvy people. My courses often bring together people who don't have these skills. If I cannot provide one whiteboard in the breakout rooms - in the way that the contents are preserved when I return to the main room then this functionality is not useful for me ...

[UeliF]

My teams/groups are rather small. Like up to 15 participants. So maybe I can make all of them co-host. This would allow anyone of them to start a whiteboard in breakout session and all members of the breakout session would work on that whiteboard.

What I have not understood yet, is how to bring this whiteboard 'back' into main session in a workable way, so in main session everybody can share additional ideas into that very whiteboard?