Add breakout rooms

In a group consultation, you can create breakout rooms and move participants into them.

Example: You want participants to pair up and work through a role play. You can create as many breakout rooms as you need to, and assign two people to each room. At the end of the activity, you can close the breakout rooms and return all participants to the main room.

Note: Breakout rooms are not available when running a group consultation from a mobile. Participants can attend via mobile, however.

Add a breakout room

Rename a breakout room

Allocate participants to breakout rooms

Join or leave a breakout room

Search for participants

Remove or close a breakout room

Hide the breakout room control panel

Mute all participants

Access remote user controls

Send chat messages in breakout rooms

Move a participant between rooms

Remove a participant from the call

Add a breakout room

To add a breakout room to your group consultation call:

  1. Start a group consultation call and admit all the participants. For more information, see Group consultation.

  2. Select Breakout rooms. The breakout rooms control panel opens.

    A section of the group consultations call screen, showing the Participants Panel on the right. There are no waiting callers and the Admit All button is inactive. The Participants list is minimised, and there there is a five beside it to indicate that there are five participants on the call. At the bottom of the Participants Panel, there are three buttons. Breakout Rooms, Leave Just Me, and End Call For All. To the left of the Participants Panel is the Breakout Rooms control panel. There is an X at the top right of it, to close or hide the panel. Below the X, the number of meeting participants appears as 5. The Search Participants field appears below the number of participants. Below the Search field, the moderator and all the participants are listed. The Add Breakout Room button appears below the participants' names. At the lower right of the Breakout Rooms control panel is the Mute All button.

  3. Select Add breakout room. Breakout room #1 is created. Repeat this step to create additional breakout rooms.

Note: By default, service usersClosed A person who is seeking care or advice from a service provider via video call. A service user may be a patient, client, consumer, citizen, or similar. can only see each others' initials. If you want them to see each others' full names, ask your administrator to enable this feature. For information about how to display service users' full names, see Default Group Consultation Settings.

Rename a breakout room

To rename a breakout room:

  1. Hover over the breakout room name. To begin with, this may be something like 'Breakout room #1'.

  2. Select (three dots icon), and then select Rename.

  3. In the Room name field, highlight the existing name to select it, and then enter the name you want.

  4. Select OK. The new name is applied.

Allocate participants to breakout rooms

To allocate participants to the breakout rooms you have created:

  1. In the breakout rooms control panel, hover over a participant's name.

  2. Select (Breakout room user controls button).

  3. Select the breakout room you want to send the participant to. The participant is moved to that room immediately.

Repeat these steps for each participant you want to place into a breakout room.

Note: Participants receive a notification on their call screen when they have been moved into a breakout room. They can select the X in the corner of the notification to close it. All participant call screen controls remain available while breakout rooms are in use.

Join or leave a breakout room

As the moderator, you can join or leave any of the breakout rooms at any time.

To join a breakout room, hover over the breakout room name and then select Join. You can do this from within the main room or another breakout room.

To leave a breakout room, select Leave breakout room.

Search for participants

With a large number of participants, it can be hard to remember which breakout room someone is in. To locate a participant, enter their name into the Search participants field at the top of the breakout rooms control panel. Select the participant's name from the results that appear.

If necessasry, you can then move the participant to another room, or move them back to the main room.

Remove or close a breakout room

To close a breakout room and return its participants to the main room:

  1. Hover over the breakout room name.

  2. Select (Breakout room controls button) and then select Close.

If you create a breakout room that you do not need, you can remove it as follows:

  1. Hover over the breakout room name.

  2. Select (Breakout room controls button) and then select Remove.

Hide the breakout room control panel

If you need more room on your screen, you can hide the breakout room control panel. To do this, select the X in the top right of the panel.

To unhide the panel, select the Breakout rooms button.

Mute all participants

To mute all participants at once, in the breakout rooms control panel, select Mute All. If you need to ask a participant to unmute themselves, you can do this via the remote user controls.

For more information about muting microphones during group consultations, see Group consultations: Mute everyone's microphone.

Access remote user controls

When you are using breakout rooms, the (Remote user controls button) that lets you mute a participant's microphone, pause their video, adjust their volume, and more, appears in the breakout room control panel.

To access this button, hover over a participant's name in the breakout room control panel. For more information about the remote user controls, see Group consultation moderator controls.

Send chat messages in breakout rooms

If chat messaging has been enabled for the group consultation waiting area you are using, you can send a chat message to all the participants in a certain breakout room, or to an individual participant in a breakout room.

Note: Chat messages can only be sent within each breakout room. It is not possible to send a chat message to all breakout rooms at once. Participants who are added to a breakout room after others have been using the chat feature will be able to see the full chat history of the room.

To send a chat message to all the participants in a breakout room:

  1. Join the breakout room. For instructions, see Join or leave a breakout room.

  2. Select the Chat button. (Chat button) from the call screen control bar. The chat panel opens.

  3. In the Type a message field, enter the text you want to send.

  4. Select (Send a chat button).

Your message and any responses participants send will be visible to everyone in the breakout room.

To send a private chat message to an individual participant in a breakout room:

  1. Join the breakout room. For instructions, see Join or leave a breakout room.

  2. Hover over a participant's name and then select (Breakout room user controls button).

  3. Select Send private message. The chat panel opens.

  4. In the Type a message field, enter the text you want to send.

  5. Select (Send a chat button).

Note: By default, service users' initials only are displayed on their video tiles and chat messages in the group consultation call screen. If they need to see each other's first and last names, ask your administrator to enable this. For more information, see Default Group Consultation Settings.

For more information about chat messages, see Send a chat message.

Move a participant between rooms

To move a participant from one breakout room to another, or to move them back to the main room:

  1. In the breakout rooms control panel, hover over a participant's name and then select (Breakout room user controls button).

  2. Select the room you want to send the participant to. The participant is moved to the selected room, and they receive a notification that they are entering that room.

Remove a participant from the call

While breakout rooms are in use, you can remove a participant from the call if necessary. To do this:

  1. In the participants panel, select Participants. The Participants list opens.

  2. Select (x button) beside the name of the participant you need to remove from the call, and confirm that you wish to remove the person.