Learn how to engage in an ON24 Breakout Room as an Attendee.  Breakout Rooms can be used in both Webcast Elite and Forums.

Things to Know

• If the Breakout Room is full, users trying to join the room will see the message: Sorry, the room is currently full.
• For Forums Events: If you have more than 50 people in a Forum event and they join a Breakout Room, they may lose the ability to rejoin the Forum event on video. The first 50 participants who rejoin the Forum after exiting the Breakout Room will be asked to connect their webcam.
• Breakout Rooms are only available for attendees in the live event

System Requirements

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.

Joining a Breakout Room

When an attendee clicks the Join button within the Breakout Room tool, they are led to a panel to specify various connection settings prior to entering the room.

Providing Consent to Be Recorded

When a room has been configured to be recordable, attendees need to provide their consent to be recorded.

Depending on how the room was configured, there are two ways consent may be provided:

Configuration 1 On the Join screen, users cannot join the room until they check the box to indicate consent.
Configuration 2 No checkbox will be presented when joining. When a recording is started, attendees are shown the following message

Engaging in the Breakout Room

When in a Breakout Room, all other console tools become hidden. Conceptually, you have left the main event and entered a separate room.

In the Breakout Room, participants are shown in a grid layout. People that are actively speaking will have a highlight around their box.

The grid layout automatically adjusts as more people join. The grid layout and chat tool are resizable.

Participants that are actively speaking appear in the main grid area. If a person in the bottom row starts speaking, they will be promoted to the main grid area and take the place of a person who has not spoken recently.

Presenters and Moderators will always have badges displayed beside their names to indicate who is leading the Breakout Room session.

To maximize the size of the Breakout Room, click the small icon in the upper right corner of the screen. To return to the default size, click the X button or press the Escape key.

When a screen is shared, attendees will see the screen share in the main grid area. Participants will be shown in the bottom row.

In the example, a Moderator is sharing their screen (showing a clock). There are nine participants in the room and only one has their webcam turned on.

If enabled, Moderators who have joined through the Audience Console can grant permission to attendees to share their screens.

All attendees have screen share initially disabled.

Attendees that have been given permission will see the screen share icon at the top of their screen.

Note: For iPads, Beta Screenshare is available for IOS. This feature will be enabled by request only. Please contact Support for details The ON24 Screenshare app will need to be downloaded from the app store. Screenshare is not available on Safari browsers v15 and older.

If the chat has been enabled, the chat component will be shown to the right of the grid.

Attendee Menu

• Participant List: Click to see a list of the participants in the room
• Raise/Lower Hand: An attendee can raise a hand in a Breakout Room session by clicking the small hand button in the Attendee menu. An attendee can lower their hand by clicking on the same hand button.
• Settings: Click to change your webcam or microphone
• Camera ON/OFF: Click the camera icon to toggle the camera on or off.
• Microphone ON/OFF: Click the microphone icon to toggle between being muted or unmuted.
  • Note: Moderators have full control over when attendees can unmute and be heard in the Breakout Room - if a microphone is currently disabled, the message, "You can not unmute until a moderator permits you" will show below the microphone icon.
•  Leave: Leave the room and return to the main event

Many of the same Engagement Tools added to the event console can optionally be included in the Breakout Room. The functionality of the tools will be the same as they are in the event.

The Forums Process

When an attendee leaves a Forums event to join a Breakout Room, they're automatically disconnected from the Forums event so they may connect in the Breakout Room. Upon returning to the Forums event, the camera/mic should automatically reconnect with the same settings that were set before joining the Breakout Room.

If you have more than 50 people in a Forums event and they join a Breakout Room, they may lose the ability to rejoin the Forums event on video. The first 50 participants who rejoin the Forums event after exiting the Breakout Room will be asked to connect their webcam.