Breakout Sessions in Meetings: Major Potential Issues

[scott schwieger]

Hello, I am a user of WebEx Meetings and experimenting with newly added Breakout Sessions. I am trying to find out how to allow attendees to navigate through Breakout Sessions without being assigned by a host. In WebEx Training, there are two options readily available that I cannot find in Meetings related to manually creating Breakout Sessions (screenshot attached):
1. Option to "Let others join Breakout Session without invitation"
2. Option to "Allow attendees to create Breakout Sessions"

In Meetings, it seems that the Host must place people in each breakout room. This is not convenient when running a large meeting. But also as a host, I cannot grant access to multiple Breakout Rooms. So this must be repeated over and over. Logistically, in a meeting with 300 attendees this is impossible.

As a workaround, I can make all the attendees Cohosts which gives them the ability to go from Breakout Session to Breakout Session freely. This presents a huge problem of an attendee accidentally "Ending All Breakout Sessions" with one click and potentially "Ending Meeting" inadvertently. This is a very nerve-wracking possibility.

Is this the only way to do this or does anyone have a better solution?

Is there a way to limit Cohost ability to not be able to End Meeting or Breakout Session?

Can the Webex Training options be implemented into Meetings? This makes the most sense.

Can One-click "End all breakout sessions" be modified with added "Are you sure?" in case of accidental click of this button.

Thanks,

Scott

[Goswin Weemaes]

You can vote for the idea on our User Community Portal:
https://ciscocollabcustomer.ideas.aha.io/ideas/WXCUST-I-1011

[ReneP18552]

We also have inquiries about the lack of the possibility for participants to join breakout sessions on their own. Especially if the sessions are to work on different topics and the participants are to join according to their interests, it is difficult to ask everyone who is interested in which topic and then assign the individuals accordingly.

We would also be very interested in having the training feature "Assign Registered Attendees to Breakout Sessions" in Meetings: https://help.webex.com/en-us/8cckd2/Manage-Breakout-Sessions-in-Cisco-Webex-Training#ID_2703_00000c01

[Clare Davis, Webex SME]

I know there is a limitation at this time, in meetings, to only assign people to Breakouts, I am not sure when it maybe updated to let attendees pick where they want to go as far a breakouts.  Breakouts will continue to evolve in Meetings, I'll reach back out if I hear anything more on this.

As far as there being a mechanism to not allow leaders to end breakouts,  nothing coming that I know of.  There is also no way to do this in Webex training.  

[Ashish Patel]

Hi

Breakout Rooms only "Hosts and cohosts create breakout sessions, assign participants and then, when they're ready, start the sessions."

Attendees can not do this themselves.

You may have to carefully pick your co-hosts (perhaps the leads of the training breakouts) and warn them not to end any sessions with a bit of training. Or automatically assign people to the breakouts?

You can not limit the Co-host capability to end the meeting, I think they get will get asked though, do they want to leave or end the meeting when they leave.

More about Breakout features are here

https://help.webex.com/en-us/nroo6fs/Webex-Meetings-Breakout-Sessions

https://help.webex.com/en-us/n8dklav/Explore-Training-Capabilities-in-Webex-Meetings

My understanding is we continue to make this better and roadmap features may have to be discussed with your account team.

Thanks,

ashish