Zoom: Pre-Assigning Meeting Participants to Breakout Rooms

This article provides guidance on pre-assigning breakout rooms for a U-M Zoom meeting, including tips and warnings.

Environment

U-M Zoom

Issue

• I am creating a Zoom meeting and want the participants to be assigned to specific breakout rooms. Can I set these up beforehand so I don't have to assign them during the meeting?
• Why did the participants I pre-assigned to breakout rooms not end up where I assigned them?

Resolution

As a meeting host, you can pre-assign your participants into breakout rooms when scheduling the meeting. Below, you will find a list of important details related to pre-assigning breakout rooms.

• Zoom allows you to pre-assign up to 100 breakout rooms in a meeting.
• Breakout rooms are not available in U-M Zoom webinars.
• Pre-assigning breakout rooms is done through the website and not the desktop app.
• Participants must be signed in to the Zoom account associated with the email address used for their pre-assignment so it can be applied correctly.
  • If they are not signed in or signed in with a different account, the pre-assignment will not be applied to them.
• You can only pre-assign participants who have a Zoom account (U-M or non-UM).
  • To pre-assign external (non-UM) participants, you must import their email addresses as a CSV file during the assignment process.
• Only one set of pre-assignments can be configured for a meeting. These assignments can be adjusted and changed, but it is not possible to store multiple sets of pre-assignments for one meeting or meeting series.
• If you scheduled recurring meetings, the pre-assigned breakout rooms will only work if they are applied to all meetings in the recurrence. You can't edit a single meeting in the recurrence and apply a unique pre-assignment. (It's all or nothing.)
• If someone joins the meeting while the breakout rooms are in session, even if they were pre-assigned, they won't be sent into a breakout room and will be left in the main session. The host will need to manually assign them to a room from the breakout room controls panel.

Refer to the Zoom Support article for full instructions on pre-assigning breakout rooms.

The following are tips for completing the pre-assignment process:

• University community members must be pre-assigned using their @umich.edu email address.
  • Do not use @med.umich.edu or other UMICH email addresses. They will appear as external since their U-M Zoom accounts are associated with their @umich.edu address.
• Ensure that all email addresses are entered using lowercase letters.
  • There have been reported issues with breakout rooms when email addresses use a mix of upper and lowercase letters.
• While not required, we recommend that you either:
  • Require participants to register for the meeting to ensure you use the correct email address for pre-assignments.
    • If using registration for a recurring meeting, you must select Attendees need to register for each occurrence to attend.
  • Set your security option to Only authenticated users may join with an authentication method of "Sign in to Zoom" to ensure participants join with their Zoom account.
    • Alternatively, you can use the "University of Michigan Users" authentication method if your meeting only includes U-M participants.
• To pre-assign external (non-UM) participants, you must import their email addresses as a CSV file during the assignment process. (You should do this as you're creating the meeting, not after, to ensure it saves correctly.)
  1. Click Import from CSV​​​​​​​ under "Breakout Room pre-assign."
  2. Download Zoom's example CSV template, enter the information required within the CSV file, and save it.​​​​​​​
  3. Drag and drop the file into the "Import Rooms and Participants from CSV file" pop-up. (Click the drag and drop space to open your file browser instead.)
  4. You can adjust information after uploading as needed.
• Expect some participants to end up in the wrong rooms. Ensure that you, as the host, are prepared to adjust assignments.
• Refer to Pre-assigning meeting participants to breakout rooms in Zoom Support for in-depth instructions.

Additional Information

• You can save up to ten breakout room assignment configurations that were done automatically or manually for use in a future meeting in a recurring meeting series. This may be an alternative to pre-assigning breakout rooms if you do not need to control the initial setup of the rooms closely but would like to preserve them moving forward.
  1. Click the three-dots icon and then click Save Breakout Rooms after breakout rooms have been assigned but are not currently open during a meeting.
  2. Provide a name for this set of assignments and click Save.
• Alternatively, you can allow participants to select which rooms to join during the meeting instead of pre-assigning.
• If setting up a meeting for a Canvas course, have someone with a Teacher role in the course download the Canvas grade book to get the list of users to copy/paste into the CSV file.

Need additional information or assistance? Contact the ITS Service Center.