How to navigate Breakout Rooms in Sessions

As an Attendee, you may find yourself in a Breakout Room when joining a Session. Organizers may choose to split larger Sessions into smaller groups as a way to facilitate discussions, create brainstorming sessions, and encourage larger networking.

If you are an Organizer, you should check out our article How to manage Breakout Rooms in Sessions.

Joining a Breakout Room

When you join a Session, you will first find yourself in the main Session. Whenever the Organizer or Moderator is ready, they will create the Breakout Rooms and you will see a countdown for 10 seconds notifying you that you will be sent to a Breakout Room. If you would like to join the room sooner, click Join Breakout.

Note: If you join the Session after the rooms have been created, you will see the countdown upon entering and will be automatically assigned to an existing room. If all of the rooms are full, you will stay in the Main Session unless the Organizer chooses to regroup.

Within a Breakout Room

Once you have been assigned to a Breakout Room, you will only see the people who have been assigned to the same room.

Note: As an attendee you will not be able to move around to other Breakout rooms. You can only move between the main room and the Breakout room you have been assigned to.

Using the chat

There is an additional tab on the right hand side for Breakout where you can chat privately with the other people within the room. However, you can still access the Event chat as well as the main Session chat to communicate with other attendees within the Session or wider Event, as well as with the Organizer/Moderator of the Session.

Note: If the Organizer chooses to regroup and you are sent to a different Breakout Room, you will no longer have access to the previous room's chat.

Leaving a Breakout Room

At the top of the screen you will see a timer. This shows you how much time you have left in the Breakout Room before you will be sent back to the main Session. When there are 10 seconds remaining a countdown will appear. You will see a similar pop-up if the Moderator recalls the Breakout rooms before the time is up.

You can also choose to leave a Breakout Room at any time by clicking Return to Main Session in the corner.

Tip: You may want to leave a Breakout Room temporarily to ask the Moderator a question or the Organizer may ask you to re-join the Main Session as part of an activity.

Another small panel will appear to confirm that you would like to leave the Breakout Room. Click Leave to go back to the main Session. Alternatively click Cancel or the X in the top right hand corner to stay in the Breakout Room.

When you have re-joined the main Session you will need to Share your Audio and Video again by clicking the blue button that says Share Audio and Video.

Here, you will have the option to return to your Breakout Session by clicking Rejoin Breakout in the banner at the top.

Note: This option will not be available if the Organizer chooses to regroup, or if the timer has run out.

Closed Captions

If you would like to use Closed Captions within the Breakout Room, simply click the "CC" button at the bottom of the screen and the captions will appear underneath the video feeds.

For more information, check out our article about Closed Captions within Sessions.

How to navigate Breakout Rooms in Sessions

Joining a Breakout Room