Room breakout management via API

Feature Requests
1

Hi Zoom,

Would like to ask if the API can handle a situation like this:

Let’s say I am subscribed via the Pro Plan under 1 host, and I would like to manage different sessions among different people by breaking them up into breakout rooms.

Can I,

  1. Create breakout rooms ahead of time and assign users to these rooms?
  2. Generate urls which are room and user specific? Example, Room 1 with Mr Smith & Mr Anderson, would generate 2 links, one for Mr Smith & one for Mr Anderson. Basically to the same room with their identities set.

If this is doable but not in via the REST api, do let me know.

Thanks in advance!

2

Hey @joey, thanks for reaching out and using Zoom!

Unfortunately this is not possible with our APIs.

Although you can pre assign participants to break out rooms. Here is an article on how to do so,

A custom link for each Breakout Room is not needed because when the user joins, they will join in the respective Breakout Room you have assigned them to.

Let me know if this helps!

Thanks,
Tommy

3

Hey @tommy, thanks for the swift reply!

Unfortunately, that solution isn’t viable for me.
Because my participants will be allocated externally (from my site), and that’s why an API or equivalent is necessary for my users.

Users will be added or removed on the fly, and breakout rooms will need to be created on demand.

Regards,
Joey Chan

1 Like
4

Hey @joey, happy to help!

I see, thanks for sharing your use case. Currently we do not have breakout room API endpoints, but I will add this as a feature request.

You can follow our release log here for updates.

Thanks,
Tommy

2 Likes
5

did the issue resolved

6

Hey @babluvarun,

No, please see this thread:

Thanks,
Tommy

7

Hi Tommy,

I’m hoping you can assist, when hosting breakout rooms is there any ability to view all breakout rooms simultaneously as the host? For example, if I have 6 students broken into 3 rooms, I can watch all rooms without having to ‘join and leave’?

8

Hey @colin.finch,

Checkout these support docs and videos:

https://www.google.com/search?q=zoom+view+all+breakout+rooms

Please reach out to support.zoom.us for further assistance as this forum is for the Zoom App Marketplace. :slight_smile:

Thanks,
Tommy

9

Zoom Team,

Thanks so much for the great product, and all of the hard work during this global pandemic. Thank you!

The problem that I’m trying to solve is very similar to the thoughts around speed dating. Basically, I want participants to be able to meet each other 1:1 for a few minutes during our large group session.

In order to do this, I divide the group into 2 groups. The “stay-put” group, and the “rotating” group. The “stay-put” members each get assigned an individual room, say, Breakout Room A, B, C, D, etc. For simplicity, let’s refer to the “rotating” group members by number 1, 2, 3, 4, etc. So the initial pairings look like, A1, B2, C3, D4, etc. Then, after a period of time, the “rotating” group members move to a new breakout room and we have: A4, B1, C2, D3. Time passes, we rotate again, A3, B4, C1, D2, and then the final rotation, A2, B3, C4, D1.

The problem is that this is very manually intensive to do, especially at scale. The members of the session are not known beforehand, so, performing this beforehand is not possible. I suppose it would be possible to create a CSV once all the attendees are present, and then create CSV1, CSV2, CSV3, CSV4, etc, but that’s not great either.

I thought an API for Breakouts would be the best way to deal with this problem, but I’m open to any solutions!

Thanks for the great product. We love using it!

G

1 Like
10

Hi @sixosaxo we are working on gathering requirements of a Breakout Room API, but are currently prioritizing privacy and security reviews during our 90-day plan. We hope to provide further information on this in the future :slight_smile:

1 Like
11

Hi Michael, Breakout room API automation is my number 1 priority. The minute the API is available, my team plans to create an extension that will dramatically enhance the user experience with breakout rooms and we plan to published the extension into the Zoom marketplace. I would really like to be involved in the requirements gathering process. I previous posted a couple forum posts elaborating on a number of those requirements. I would also really appreciate being involved with any early beta problem if one exists for this API. Please let me know if there is anything I can do to get involved. My biggest fear is that Zoom falls short exposing enough functionality in the API. I believe I can help.

2 Likes
12

Hi @dmhirschfeld, we’re still working with product teams to gauge feasibility and timeline. This is at core a client feature to expose this via API. Receiving authorization to that user’s account through the Marketplace to the client is not something currently exposed, making this a difficult short-term release.

1 Like
13

I’d be happy with an initial release that allows me to use the API for the networking groups I work with. Exposing it to the market place could come a little later. When will the first functionality be opened up? I would be happy to help with requirements since I have spent a lot of time thinking about what is need in the API to make breakrooms become a powerful tool for education, networking, business events, etc.

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14

I saw that Breakout Rooms API is moved to the Short Term plan. Let me know if I can help in any way.

1 Like
15

Hey y’all - I see that Breakout Rooms is now marked as Released on the Developer Roadmap: Trello

But, it looks like from the documentation that the only method available is getBreakoutRoomList. https://marketplace.zoom.us/docs/sdk/sdk-reference/web-reference Is my understanding correct?

Is the Breakout management API now on the committed horizon - short, medium, or long term? Thank you!

1 Like
16

Any update on breakout room mgmt via api?

1 Like
17

This feature would be hugely useful for us to facilitate speed networking sessions remotely, something that is so important in a remote first company culture.
Any idea whether there’s been any progress?