Allow participants to choose breakout room

Breakout rooms allow you to split your Zoom meeting in up to 50 separate sessions. The meeting host can choose to split the participants of the meeting into these separate sessions automatically or manually, or they can allow participants to select and enter breakout sessions as they please. The host can switch between sessions at any time. 


Note: Self-select breakout rooms feature requires desktop client or mobile app, version 5.3.0 or higher by everyone.
Please update/upgrade your desktop client to the latest version.

To allow participants to join their own/preferred breakout room, the host:

1. Start an instant or scheduled meeting.
2. Click Breakout Rooms.
   
3. Select the number of rooms you would like to create, and how you would like to assign your participants to those rooms:
   • Automatically: Let Zoom split your participants up evenly into each of the rooms.
   • Manually: Choose which participants you would like in each room.
   • Let participants choose room: Participants can select and enter rooms on their own.
     
     
4. Verify the meeting options before Open All Rooms.
   

Self-selecting a breakout room

If the host has allowed participants to self-select and join breakout rooms of their choosing, participants will be able to view and select from a list of breakout rooms the host has created. They will be able to enter and leave breakout rooms freely. 

Note: Participants not joined with the desktop or mobile app will not be able to self-select a breakout room. The host will need to facilitate moving these participants manually.  

1. Click the Breakout Rooms option in your meeting controls.
   
   This will display the list of open breakout rooms created by the host. 
2. Click Join next to the Breakout Room you wish to participant in, then confirm by clicking Join again. 
3. Repeat as necessary to join other breakout rooms, or click Leave Room to return to the main session.