Breakout Rooms

Event breakout rooms aim to facilitate activities' interactions and leverage group work during online meetings. You can take advantage of this feature if your attendees need to discuss particular ideas and topics within several groups simultaneously.

This article intends to teach you how to use this feature inside the platform and directly at the Virtual Lobby.

How do I enable this feature?

To enable this feature, go to Settings > Tools > select Live from the tools category. Press Edit at the top right corner of your screen, and toggle on the button besides the Breakout rooms. Press End to save the changes.

Breakout rooms

If you see Click by the tool, you will need to enable this feature at the company tools. By pressing Click a new tab will open directly at the company tools, click on the Live section, press Edit, and make sure the Breakout rooms checkbox is checked. Press End to save the changes.

Creating Breakout rooms for activities

This feature is available to all room video modes, except the External Link which will take the users outside the InEvent platform.

The breakout rooms as well as the group rooms will not be recorded.
All participants can go from one breakout room session to another without restrictions.

In the platform

Once this feature is enabled, you can follow these steps:

  1. Go to Agenda > Activities
  2. Select the activity you wish to add the Breakout room.
  3. Click on Breakout room, press Edit
  4. Press +Create breakout room
  5. Add the room topic and adjust the other settings according to your needs, press Create
  6. Click on End to save the changes
gif enabling breakout room at the backend
Settings

At the Breakout rooms tab, you have the Settings:

  • Enabled: You can toggle to the right to activate the breakout rooms related to the selected activity (only the visible rooms will be enabled).
  • Active Raised Hands: Even if this function has been enabled at the Activity's detail, you still need to toggle to the right to activate for the Breakout rooms too.
settings for the breakout rooms
Editing or Deleting the Breakout room

To edit information or delete the breakout room, press the 3 dots on the top right, and a small window will give you the options to Edit Room or Delete Room.

editing or deleting the breakout room at the backend
  • If you choose to Edit Room, once you change the configuration just press Save.
  • If you opt to Delete Room, a pop-up message will appear for you to confirm the action, press Yes.
Interactivity tab

At the Settings tab, under the section Tab visibility, the 'Hide Breakout rooms' will be enabled by default. If you wish to display as a tab on the right menu inside the activity, press Edit and untick the correspondent checkbox. Click End to save the changes.

hide breakout rooms tab

At the Virtual Lobby

It is also possible to create the Breakout rooms inside the activity at the Virtual Lobby if you are an admin, room host, room co-host or staff, by following these steps:

  1. Go to the Breakout rooms tab and press the plus icon +
  2. Add the topic room and choose the settings you wish
  3. Press Create
creating breakout rooms at the Virtual Lobby
Settings

At the bottom of the Breakout rooms tab inside the Virtual Lobby you can find the Settings that can be enabled/ disabled at any time by the admin, room host, room co-host or staff:

settings of the breakout room tab
Editing or Deleting the Breakout room

To edit information or to delete the breakout room, press the 3 dots on the top right, and a small window will give you the options to Join Room, Start Room Timer, Edit Room or Delete Room.

editing or removing the breakout room from the activity
  • If you select Join Room, a Device Configuration pop-up will appear to choose if you want to Join as viewer or Join now.
  • If you press Start Room Timer, a pop-up message will appear as displayed below to confirm the action. Once the set time has elapsed, all the participants will have the Device configuration pop-up to join again the session.
Starting the breakout room timer

When the set time of the breakout room has passed, the label will show as Timer expired. If you wish to allow the participants to rejoin the session, click again on the 3 dots and press Reset Room. A pop-up message will appear to confirm the action, press Yes.

reset room button

  • If you wish to Edit the Breakout room information, do the necessary changes and press Close.
  • If you press Delete Room a pop-up message will appear for you to confirm the action, press Yes.
Running Timer

If you decide to set a Time limit for the Breakout rooms, a counter will be displayed on top of the main screen showing the remaining time. Once it reaches 15 seconds towards the end, a pop-up message will appear as illustrated in the gif below:

gif showing the remaining time at the breakout room session

If the participants choose 'Leave now' they will be redirected back to the activity straight away, or else will have 15 seconds left before this happens automatically.

Raise Hands

The raise hand icon will only appear to viewers. Those who are presenters shouldn't see the raise hand icon in the top left.

When clicking on the Raise hands button at the bottom of the page, a pop-up message will be displayed to confirm the action:

message popup received by the user

The admins, staff, room host and co-host can see the participants' requests as shown in the image below:

lower the participants hand in the breakout room

Once the requests have been addressed, the admins, staff, room host and co-hosts can click on the hand icon (next to the eye icon) and confirm the action:

breakout room message for the host, staff and hosts
The ordering of the Raise hands will not be displayed in the Breakout rooms as it does for the activities.

Changing icon and label

If you wish to change the icon and label of Breakout rooms, go to Settings > Tabs > Virtual rooms. Scroll down until you see Breakout rooms, click on top of it and a small window will open on the right. Select the icon you wish to use and the new label, press End to save the changes.

changing icon and label for breakout rooms

Group rooms

If you don't want to create Breakout rooms inside the activities, another option is to create Group Rooms in the Virtual Lobby. This can also be done in the backend of the platform or even in the Virtual Lobby.

The first thing you need to do is check if the Networking feature is enabled in your settings. For that, go to Settings >Tools, under the Live category, search for Networking click on the Edit button on the top right of your page and enable the corresponding toggle button

Enabling the networking tool

If you have a Registration Form, only attendees that selected the option Yes in the question Visible to others will be able to participate in Group Rooms.
If you wish to rename the Group Room sections, this can be done via Headings.

Creating Group Rooms on the platform

Click here to learn how to create group rooms on the platform.

Creating Group Rooms in the Virtual Lobby

Click here to learn how to create group rooms in the Virtual Lobby.

Collapse Networking area

In case you want the Group room to appear on the top of the page instead. In the platform you can go to Event > Virtual Lobby > Settings, and select the Live category. Scroll down to Collapse Networking area and toggle on the corresponding button to enable it.

collapsing networking area under the Virtual Lobby tools

In this case, attendees can only join groups that have already been created in the backend, not having the option to create a new one.

In case you want to have a private meeting with an attendee, you can click here and check all the possible ways for you to do that inside InEvent’ s platform.

Joining a Group Room

Whenever you enter a Group Room, the platform will ask for access to your microphone and camera. You have the option to join to speak by clicking on Join now or simply as a viewer by clicking on Join as a viewer:

Screenshot of Inside the group room > join as a viewer > Join as a speaker

The Chat functionality will also be available for attendees to interact with each other.


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