If you are experiencing technical issues using a Breakout Room, please follow these troubleshooting tips.

Things to Know

• Breakout Rooms can be used in Webcast Elite events and Forums events.
• We recommend designating a separate Breakout moderator from the event's Presenter/Producer team. ON24 Breakouts was designed to facilitate a two-way conversation between the audience and a guest speaker, sales rep, product consultant, or other relevant subject matter expert during the live event.
• Testing of Breakouts is not supported through the Preview URL or before the live event. We recommend you create a separate test event and rehearse the Breakout functionality in a live event after the Start Webcast button is pressed.
• If you have more than 50 attendees in a Forums event, some participants may lose the ability to join on video when they return to the Forums event from the Breakout Room. When participants return to the main Forums event, the first 50 attendees will have the option to connect with a webcam.

System Requirements

• Initiating screen share is not supported on the Safari web browser. If you are a moderator who needs to screen share, use a different browser (Chrome or Edge). There is no Safari limitation for attendees viewing someone else’s screen share. It is only initiating a screen share on Safari that is not supported.
• Firefox is not a supported browser for Breakout Rooms.
• Presenters running Chrome Version 99.0.4844.74 on iOS/Mac (Big Sur 11.6 and other versions) may experience an inability to screen share in Breakout Rooms (see fix below).
• If joining a Breakout Room as a Moderator, you must join from a desktop or a laptop - joining via a mobile device is only supported for those joining a Breakout Room as an attendee.

As a general best practice, close all unnecessary applications and clear your cache before logging into each event.  This will improve browser performance while ensuring all recent uploads and changes are visible.

General Troubleshooting Steps 

Step 1:  Determine whether the problem may be caused by your network environment or hardware

You can use the following steps to determine this:

1. Make sure you are using the latest version of a WebRTC-capable browser. Check here for a list of known major supported browsers.
2. Make sure you have the right ports open. You can check this by running a pre-call test. The pre-call test will be at the login screen of the Breakout Room. This test should identify where there are any network issues connecting to the servers. If something is blocked, proceed to Step 2.

Step 2:  Confirm you are connected to the Internet

1. Are you connected to the Internet?
2. Web browser security settings (especially for Internet Explorer) may be too restrictive or blocking certain content
3. There may be a security restriction enforced on your network. Review our guide on restrictive networks here.

Step 3:  Confirm the browser can access the camera/microphone

If the earlier pre-call test didn't show any issues with the network, but you weren't able to see the camera/microphone functioning correctly:

1. Confirm you are allowing access to your camera and microphone when prompted by the browser. You may have blocked access and saved this preference. Check your browser settings.

2. Check if the camera works on a different browser. For instance, if you are using Firefox, see if Chrome works instead.
3. If you have multiple cameras, make sure the correct camera is selected.
4. Does the camera work in the WebRTC demo?
5. Does the camera work in another application, such as Microsoft Teams or Photo Booth?
6. Still no luck? Contact Support - we'd love to help.

Known Screen Share Issue with iOS/Mac and Google Chrome Browser

Presenters running Chrome Version 99.0.4844.74 on iOS/Mac (Big Sur 11.6 and other versions) may experience an inability to screen share in Breakout Rooms (and during Live Video and Audio with screen share (Video Presenter Bridge) events).

To resolve this issue:

1. Open System Preferences (users may hit CMD + Space and type “pref”)
2. Open “Security & Privacy”
3. On the left, scroll down and click “Screen Recording”
4. Users may need to click the lock on the bottom left to make changes and enter their credentials
5. Uncheck Chrome on the right
6. On the popup, click “Quit & Reopen”
7. Re-check the Chrome box again
8. Click “Quit & Reopen”