Persistent Breakout Rooms within Training Center?

[EricGordon111415]

Has Webex ever considered the functionality of persistent breakout rooms? That is what I was used to with Adobe Connect and it allowed me to get the entire breakout room set before initiating breakouts. I do not see the ability to do that within Training Center but may have not gotten to that yet in my exploring (I am a new user of Training Center and am trying to learn as much as I can as quickly as I can)

Thanks.

Eric

[StevenTr]

Do you mean something different than the setting Breakout Session Assignments Settings where you can automatically assign users to breakout rooms (by group size or number of groups) or manually assign registered users tot groups.

[EricGordon111415]

Yes. Thanks for asking. I have used Adobe Connect in the past and you are able to go into the breakout session rooms ahead of time, set up the whiteboards, have files already loaded in the room, and leave the room. When participants go into breakout, everything is there waiting for them already. While it is a convenience, it also means that some of your items are stored on Adobe's servers, and Cisco feels strongly about that being non-secure for their clients. We get around it by assigning one of our panelists as the "presenter" for each breakout room. They join first, get the room ready and we then have participants manually join an open breakout room. The room is all set by the panelist/presenter, who then passes presenter rights to one of the breakout room participants, before leaving the session. It takes some good planning, but it is doable if you have enough panelists for the number of breakout sessions you want to run.

Best,

Eric

[LewisLikens · Accepted solution]

Eric: I'm a newbie as well but have not discovered a way to create persistent sessions. The only thing you can do in advance is configure your Breakout Session Assignment Settings when filling out the scheduling form. In our training center we are all using the Manual set up process. Once you've started the class and have all the attendees present you create the individual breakout groups (called Sessions) than highlight and add the names you want in each group. Unfortunately no way to do this in advance. We don't use the Automatic method because we like to have more control over who is in what group. For example, I don't want all my quiet people in the same group, etc. Claire Davis has great training on breakouts on the cisco site. ONE TIP that I learned finally yesterday is that you must stop all screen sharing when you launch the groups. Otherwise, your start button will be grayed out. This is missing from all the documentation!

[EricGordon111415]

Thanks so much Lewis!

Great extra piece of information regarding the sharing. As I am starting to work with my team to figure out how to run breakout sessions as best as possible (since I do not suspect there is an ability to have breakout rooms persist), we create whiteboards with titles on them (much like titling a flip chart paper in a "live" session) and then saving it as a .ucf file. One of us is a panelist in the breakout room and we can upload that file into the breakout room so attendees can begin annotating on it as if it were a piece of flip chart paper. If I have a savvy participant, I can transfer that .ucf file using the File Transfer function BEFORE breakouts begin and then instruct them to upload it into their room once they get in - before they click YES to initiate the breakout. It is a workaround for sure but it saves some time. I figured it was still worth asking to see if one of the experts knows other "tips" in the absence of persistence.

Look forward to continuing to learn from you and others in the community. 

Eric