Pre-assigning meeting participants to breakout rooms

As a meeting host, you can pre-arrange your meeting participants into breakout rooms when scheduling the meeting. This can be useful if you already know how you want to group your participants.

You can also manage your breakout rooms during the meeting.

This article covers:

• Limitations for pre-assigning participants to breakout rooms
• How to re-assign participants to breakout rooms using the web portal
• How to pre-assign participants to breakouts rooms using a CSV file
• How to edit breakout room assignments
• How to start a meeting with pre-assigned breakout rooms
• How to recover pre-assigned breakout rooms

Prerequisites for pre-assigning meeting participants to breakout rooms

• Breakout rooms enabled with pre-assignment option selected
• End-to-end encryption disabled for the meeting
• Host:
  • Zoom desktop client for Windows, macOS, or Linux: Global minimum version or higher
  • Web client
• Participants:
  • Zoom desktop client for Windows, macOS, or Linux: Global minimum version or higher
  • Zoom mobile app for Android or iOS: Global minimum version or higher
  • Web client
    Note: When joining a meeting with pre-assignments, participants need to be signed in to the Zoom account associated with the email address used for pre-assignments for the pre-assignment to be applied. If they are not signed in or signed in with a different account, the pre-assignment will not be applied to them. 

Limitations for pre-assigning meeting participants to breakout rooms

• You can pre-assign up to 100 rooms and up to 1000 participants. Learn more about breakout room capacity limitations.
• Only one set of pre-assignments can be configured for a meeting. These assignments can be adjusted and changed, but it is not possible to store multiple sets of pre-assignments for one meeting or meeting series. 
• You can only pre-assign participants that have a Zoom account (internal or external Zoom users).
• To pre-assign participants that are external Zoom users, import a CSV file.
• If you scheduled recurring meetings, the pre-assigned breakout rooms will only work if it's applied to all meetings in the recurrence. You can't edit a single meeting in the recurrence and apply a unique pre-assignment.

How to pre-assign participants to breakout rooms using the web portal

1. Sign in to the Zoom web portal.
2. In the navigation menu, click Meetings.
3. Click Schedule a Meeting.
4. In the Options section, select the Breakout Room pre-assign checkbox, then click Create Rooms.
   A Breakout Room Assignment window will appear.
5. In the window, to the right of Rooms, click the plus button to add breakout rooms.
6. In the right panel, hover your mouse over the breakout room name, then click the pencil button to rename it.
7. In the Add participants text box, search for internal participants by name or email address, or manually enter the email address of external users, and then press Enter to to add them to the breakout room. 
8. (Optional) Use these options to edit your breakout rooms and participants:
   • Click and drag a participant's email address to change the order.
   • Hover your mouse over a participant's name to see options to move them to another room or remove them from the current room.
   • To delete a breakout room, hover your mouse over the room name in the left panel and click the trash icon . 
9. Click Save.

How to pre-assign participants to breakouts rooms using a CSV file

1. Sign in to the Zoom web portal.
2. In the navigation menu, click Meetings.
3. Click Schedule a Meeting.
4. In the Options section, select the Breakout Room pre-assign checkbox, then click Import from CSV.
   An Import Rooms and Participants from CSV file pop-up window will appear.
5. In the pop-up window, click download to download a sample CSV file you can fill out.
6. Open the CSV file with spreadsheet software, such as Microsoft Excel.
   Note: You can specify Zoom users that are internal (in the same account) or external (not in the same account).
7. Fill in the Pre-assign Room Name column with the breakout room name, and the Email Address column with the assigned participant's email address. 
8. Save the file.
9. In the web portal, drag and drop the file into the Import Rooms and Participants from CSV file pop-up window.
   Zoom will verify that the email address has a Zoom account.

How to edit breakout room assignments

If you have already pre-assigned participants to breakout rooms, you can edit the assignments before you start the meeting. 

Note: You can also manage breakout rooms during the meeting.

1. Sign in to the Zoom web portal.
2. In the navigation menu, click Meetings.
3. Click the meeting you want to edit.
4. In the Breakout Room section, click View detail.
5. Edit the breakout rooms as needed. See the previous section for more details.
6. Click Save.

How to start a meeting with pre-assigned breakout rooms

1. Start the meeting with participants pre-assigned to breakout rooms. 
2. Click Breakout Rooms in the meeting controls to access the breakout rooms you created.
   Note:
   • If a participant is not automatically assigned to the breakout room you specified when scheduling the meeting, recover to pre-assigned breakout rooms to re-assign participants to their pre-assigned breakout rooms.
   • You can manually assign participants using the in-meeting breakout room controls.
3. Click Open All Rooms to start the breakout rooms.

How to recover pre-assigned breakout rooms

After starting the breakout rooms, you can recover to the breakout rooms assignment you previously specified. This can be useful if you changed your breakout rooms during the meeting, or pre-assigned participants have joined the meeting after you joined the meeting or started breakout rooms. 

1. Start the meeting with participants pre-assigned to breakout rooms. 
2. Click Close All Rooms to end all breakout rooms.
3. Click Recreate then Recover to pre-assigned rooms. 
   Participants will be reorganized into the breakout rooms you specified when scheduling the meeting.

Learn more about managing meeting breakout rooms.