How Do I Pre-assign a Zoom Breakout Room?

Owned by Brian Hinds (Unlicensed)
Last updated: Sept 13, 2021
3 min read

Introduction

Zoom allows users to pre-assign participants into specific breakout rooms when editing a meeting in the biola.zoom.us/meeting/ web interface. Users can manually create and assign students in particular rooms or import a .csv file that contains the desired breakout room participant configuration.


Related Topics

How Pre-assign a Zoom Classroom to a Breakout Room

How Do I Start a Breakout Room in a Zoom Classroom?

How Do I Start a Breakout Room outside a Zoom Classroom?

How Do I Join a Breakout Room in a Zoom Classroom?

How Do I Join a Breakout Room outside a Zoom Classroom?

Warning

Zoom does not allow pre-assigning breakout rooms for a single occurrence of a recurring meeting. If you try to pre-assign breakout rooms for a single occurrence of a recurring meeting it will not save. You must select the option to Edit All Occurrences.


How to pre-assign Breakout Rooms manually

StepWhat to do
1

Ensure all Breakout Room settings are enabled in your Zoom account:

  1. Go to https://biola.zoom.us/profile/setting.
  2. Locate the Breakout room setting and ensure it is enabled.
  3. Ensure the following setting (located below the Breakout room one in the previous step) is checked: 
2Go to biola.zoom.us/meeting/
3Log in using your NetID & password.
4Click the meeting you would like to pre-assign participants in.
5

Click the Edit this Meeting button and select All on the pop-up window.

Note: If you do not select All, your pre-assignments will not save.

6Scroll down to and check the box for Breakout Room pre-assign.
7Click + Create Rooms.
8Click the + button next to "Rooms" until you've created the desired number of rooms.
9Click the room you'd like to add a participant into.
10Type the student's email address into the Add participants text box and press the return or enter key on your keyboard.
11

Repeat steps 8-9 until all desired participants are added into the desired breakout rooms.

Note: When teaching from a Zoom classroom, if you leave a number of students unassigned from breakout rooms, they'll remain in the main meeting and turn it into a breakout room that you can join from the Zoom classroom.

12Click Save.
13Click Save to save your meeting's breakout room pre-assignment.


How to pre-assign Breakout Rooms using a .CSV file

StepWhat to doHow to do it
1

Ensure all Breakout Room settings are enabled in your Zoom account:

  1. Go to https://biola.zoom.us/profile/setting.
  2. Locate the Breakout room setting and ensure it is enabled.
  3. Ensure the following setting (located below the Breakout room one in the previous step) is checked: 

2Download the Zoom Breakout Room Template CSV Import File.
3

Fill out the template CSV with your desired participant breakout room assignment.

For example:

Room NameStudent Email
Room 1john.smith@biola.edu
Room 1jane.doe@biola.edu
Room 2bob.nelson@biola.edu
Room 2steve.johnson@biola.edu
  1. Type in or paste your students' email addresses into column B (starting in row 2).
  2. Type the name of the breakout room you would like each student (listed in column B) to be assigned to in column A. This can be any name.

Note: When teaching from a Zoom classroom, if you leave a number of students unassigned from breakout rooms, they'll remain in the main meeting and turn it into a breakout room that you can join from the Zoom classroom.

4Go to biola.zoom.us/meeting/
5Log in using your NetID & password.
6Click the meeting you would like to pre-assign participants in.
7Click the Edit this Meeting button and select All on the pop-up window.
8Scroll down to and check the box for Breakout Room pre-assign.
9Click Import from CSV.
10Click browse, locate and select the file or drag and drop the import template file into the pop-up window.
11Click Save.
12Click Save to save your meeting's breakout room pre-assignment.