Breakout Room Cycles

Q: Can I have serval configuration of breakout rooms in one conference?
A:  Yes! Participants can be split into a series of different breakout rooms/groups over the course of a conference.

Breakout Room Cycles

With Breakout Cycles, an Organizer can set up a meeting that will cycle through a predefined set of breakout assignments, allowing each participant to be assigned to a different breakout as a conference progresses.

This would be useful when a class is going to perform several exercises in small groups, and for each exercise, the groups are to include different sets of people.

Enabling Breakout Cycles

To enable this feature, include “_breakN” in the Project Tracker for the meeting (or template). N is a digit between 1 and 9, indicating how many cycles there will be.

BreakoutCycles01

Participant Setup

For each participant in the meeting that will move into the various breakouts, put a series of two-digit values at the beginning of the Company field, indicating the room assignment for each part of the cycle.

If registering participants one-by-one using the ZipDX web portal this would appear as pictured below:

BreakoutCycles02

It would likely be preferable to register participants in bulk using our CSV upload process.

It is perhaps easiest to explain with an example. Include _break3 in the Project Tracker, and put 6 digits in each participant’s company name.

Here’s a sample CSV using several virtual Zusers. The CSV file would be used to register all the participants in one simple process.

emailfirst namelast namecompany
breakuser1@a2.zusers.comSueSheffield010101
breakuser2@a2.zusers.comLarryLarson010244
breakuser3@a2.zusers.comPattyParsons020144
breakuser4@a2.zusers.comRogerRobinson020201

Conference Start

When the meeting starts, breakouts are not active; each user will join in the main room.

First Breakout

When a host activates breakouts from the dashboard, Sue and Larry will move to room 1, and Patty and Roger will move to room 2. An announcement will play to those still in the main conference, stating “Breakout Cycle One.”

When the first exercise is concluded, the host can return all to main.

Second Breakout

When breakouts are next activated, Sue and Patty will be in room 1, and Larry and Roger will be in room 2. “Breakout Cycle Two” will be announced.

Third Breakout

Breakouts can be activated a third time (even without returning all to main), and now Sue and Roger will be in room 1, and Larry and Patty will be in room 44.

(Note that expanded breakouts must be enabled if room numbers higher than 8 are used. Whether or not expanded mode is selected, the breakout sequence in the Company field must contain two digits for each room.)

And Again…

If breakouts are activated again, the system will cycle back to the first values (and announce “Breakout Cycle One.” Be sure that the number of digits in the Company field is aligned with the “_breakN” specification in the project tracker.

Late Arrivals

If a participant connects to the meeting while breakouts are active, they will join according to the current cycle and their Company setting. For example, if Larry connects while cycle 3 is active, he will be placed in room 44.

The event log will show the cycle number with the entry for each breakout activation.

Keypad vs Dashboard

Breakouts can also be activated via keypad (*958); in this case, the announcement will play only to the activating host. Breakouts are deactivated using *940 (return all to main).

Other

Assigning the breakout cycle feature with _breakN overrides all other breakout features (auto-assignment and selection via prefix digits in the participants first names).

The *gen and *dok suffixes can be included in the company name (but the breakout digits must be at the beginning).