Enable the option in your account

Before reading this article, please ensure that you have logged into your Zoom account via https://yorku.zoom.us, and you have enabled the breakout room option in your settings. For directions on how to go about this process, please refer to our article, How to enable Breakout rooms in your Zoom account settings.

Once this has been done, you will see the Breakout Room pre-assign option in any of your new meeting's settings when you edit a meeting's properties from https://yorku.zoom.us/signin.

Three ways to make a meeting; only one to add breakout rooms

Pre-assigning your participants into breakout rooms is done when you create your meeting through your Zoom account at https://yorku.zoom.us/signin. You will not see this feature if you use either the eClass plugin or the Zoom application. You can still create meetings through either portal, but you will have to go into your Zoom account in order to enable and add/modify the breakout rooms and (if applicable) their participants.

Instructions on how to login to your dashboard via the York University Zoom portal is found here.

Breakout room template

Usually you can get this while enabling the option when you create (or edit) your meeting. To speed things up, a copy of the breakout room template can be downloaded here. Filling the template out is fairly straight forward. Don't change the first row. This needs to be as you see it. Change the rooms in column A and add your participants emails in column B. Ideally, set the rooms and students up as you go so you don't have to change it later. When you're finished, you can save a copy for when you get to step 4 in the next section.

Enabling the breakout room in your meeting

Assuming that you have either created the meeting through the Zoom application or eClass, as indicated above, go to your Zoom account via https://yorku.zoom.us/signin. If you are creating your meeting from your Zoom account, then you can skip the following steps 1 and 2, as you can do this while you create the meeting:

1. Go to the meeting you want to enable your breakout room in. When you login, by default you are taken to the Upcoming Meetings section of your account.
2. Hover over the meeting with your mouse. You will see the Edit button appear. Click on it.
3. In the Meeting Options section, click on Show to expand the available options. Add a check mark for the Breakout Room pre-assign option.
4. Click on the option Import from CSV. For this exercise, we are focusing on pre-populating the rooms with attendees. If you have not yet already, you can click to download the template here. Otherwise, take the spreadsheet you've already mocked up (see: Breakout room template section, above) and drag and drop the file into the field.
5. Once the sheet has been parsed, you will see the rooms and the emails that you assigned in the spreadsheet, now in the meeting.
6. Save and close the meeting.

Aside from step 4, you can also manually create rooms and fill them up with participants later on by clicking on the + Create Rooms option. A window will appear. You can add and rename breakout rooms here, but not the participants. Should you want to go to the import function referred to in step 4, you can do so by clicking the Import from CSV link in the bottom left corner of the window.

At the time of the meeting, attendees will be able to break-away to their pre-assigned spaces without having to do any extra work.