Q: How are participants assigned to groups?
A: Participants can be assigned to groups in advance of the call when they are invited, at point of dial-in as they are entering the conference code, or during the call using the conference dashboard.
The ability to use the Breakout Participants tool in the conference dashboard requires that participants be assigned to groups. Each group corresponds to one of the breakout rooms. When group assignments are in place the system can quickly move each group into its associated breakout room.
There are four ways participants can be assigned to a group:
1Assign To Groups In Advance
When an organizer is scheduling a conference using the ZipDX web portal, they can invite the participants using their email addresses. They can add a simple prefix to each email address which assigns that participant to a group.
The prefix is “Gx:“, where x is the group number. For example, using G2:lisa.simpson@mstvp.com invites her to a conference, assigning her to Group 2.
Once added to the conference, the participants group assignment appears in the Role column. Note that only participants can be assigned to groups. Selecting any other role removes the group assignment.
2Assign To Group While Connecting
If a conference code is being used participants who are not registered with the system can preset their breakout group assignment as they enter the conference code.
The syntax for this is:
[BreakoutGroup]*[ConferenceCode]
For example, a participant dialing in and entering:
6*12345678
…will join conference 12345678 and be assigned to breakout group #6.
When the conference host uses the Break-Out Participants command that participant will be moved to breakout room #6.
Since the conference participants are not known to ZipDX, this approach presumes that the conference organizer will distribute appropriate connection details to all of the conference participants.
3Assign To Group Via The Dashboard
When the conference is live, the dashboard displays the group assignment as a number just in front of the participants name. A host can assign a participant to a group, on-the-fly, by renaming the participant to include the group number.
Simply click on the participant’s entry in the dashboard to access a menu, then select the rename option. Enter the desired group number, followed by a space, and the participant’s name. Click OK to make the change.
The presence of the leading digit in the name informs the system where to move each participant when the Break-Out Participants command is used.
Hosts and participants with no group assigned remain in the main room (0) when the Break-Out Participants command is invoked.
4Auto-Assign To Group Via The Dashboard
The Rooms menu in the Host Controls includes an Auto-assign Breakout option. This feature builds upon #3 above, but allows the host to quickly split the participants into evenly-sized groups across an arbitrary number of breakout rooms.
Clicking on the menu itm results in a prompt for the number of breakout rooms. Enter the number of rooms you desire and the system will automatically assign breakouts evenly across the participants.
For example, a conference with 60 participants, when auto-assigned into 4 breakouts, results in 15 participants per breakout room.
As a further example, assuming that expanded breakout rooms are enabled, that same conference could be auto-assigned into 30 breakout rooms. That would result in just 2 participants assigned to each breakout, for one-to-one discussion.
Using the Auto-assign Breakout function replaces any previous breakout assignments.
Related Pages: Breakout Rooms
