How to Create, Launch and End Breakout Groups
One of our most exciting new features is the ability to create breakout groups in the CircleSpace™️ in order to send participants into different rooms for separate collaboration and discussion. This step-by-step guide will explain how to sort your participants into the groups you want, and how to send them on their way to the breakout circles.
Breakouts are created, launched, monitored and ended from the breakouts panel in the settings menu of the CircleSpace™️. To open it, click on the settings button at the top left of the room and select ‘Breakouts‘.
Now that you have the breakouts panel open, you can begin to sort your participants. You can do this by either automatically assigning them to breakout groups, or by purposefully assigning each participant to a particular group.
To place participants at random into groups, click the ‘Auto-Assign to Breakouts‘ button on the bottom left of the panel. You will then be asked how many groups you wish to create, and whether you would like to include yourself in the breakout. The number of groups available to create depends on how many participants are in the room.
Alternatively, simply start dragging participants into the breakout group section, or create a group by clicking ‘Add Breakout Group‘ on the bottom right of the panel. With this second option, you’ll be asked to name the group, and from there all you have to do is click and drag the participants you want to place in each group.
If you make a mistake or want to get rid of the groups you have already created, simply click the ‘Clear All‘ button at the bottom of the panel. You can also click and drag participants out of a group again in order to remove them from the group or to drag them to another group.
When you have created a breakout group, you may wish to edit it by renaming, clearing it of participants, or deleting it altogether. To open the edit menu for each group, click the three horizontal dots on the right of each group.
The ‘Rename Group‘ button will open the text editor where you can type in a different name for your group.
Clicking the ‘Clear Group’ button will remove all participants from that group and return them to the People list on the left.
Finally, you can delete a group entirely by clicking ‘Delete Group’.
When you have completed filling the groups and are ready to launch the breakouts, all you need to do is click ‘Start Breakout Session‘. This will immediately send each group to their separate rooms.
You will also notice that the same button changes to say ‘End Breakout Session’. Clicking this will send a message to the participants in the breakouts to come back to the main room.
When in the breakout room, participants can click ‘Return to the Session’ when they are finished to come back to the main room.
Once you have sent people to breakouts, you can monitor them. Head over to How to Monitor Breakouts in Progress to learn more!