Separate Audio Channels for Breakout Sessions

[dharwell]

Good afternoon everyone,

We're scheduling our first Webex Training Session for next month. I ran a test meeting and it went well, except that when I started the Breakout Sessions, everyone could still hear each other rather than splitting into different voice channels. Is there a setting I missed for this?

[Mike_Brezicky]

Hello,

Are you sure the participants actually moved to the breakout sessions. When they are created, unless you select auto assign, they still have to move into the rooms. Once a participant moves to a room, it should disconnect the main audio conference session and join them into the breakout room audio conference.
Please also see the tow following docs for more detail. Thanks.
https://help.webex.com/en-us/8cckd2/Manage-Breakout-Sessions-in-Cisco-Webex-Training
https://help.webex.com/en-us/cg7v59/Attend-a-Breakout-Session-in-Cisco-Webex-Training

[EricGordon111415]

Here is what our experience has been and it works fairly consistently (this may be in the two documents Mike linked - have not checked them). Participants will receive a pop-up asking them if they wish to transfer their audio from the main room to their breakout room. They must select "YES" or else their audio remains connected to the main room. Participants receive an additional prompt FIRST, inviting them to either start the breakout session (if they are flagged as the Presenter) or join the breakout session (once the Presenter has started it). Again, they have to select "YES" to this prompt or else the breakout session will not get started or they will not join the session to which they've been invited.

We have run into issues when the Presenter for a breakout group has stepped away from their computer before we start the breakouts - since they are not present to select "YES," the people assigned to their breakout room do not receive their prompt to join (and then the 2nd prompt to transfer their audio). It's a mess! So, we try to catch the attention of all participants BEFORE going into breakouts, in hopes of mitigating this from happening - but alas it still happens. We have come up with a few fancy workarounds to handle the "stranded" participants awaiting a breakout invite.

So - instruct your participants to be alert and select "Yes" to both prompts - that way they will move into the breakout, along with their integrated audio (if they have called in and not used the attendee ID, their audio cannot move - that's a whole separate issue, though).

Feel free to clarify if this does not help.

Eric

[dharwell]

I just had our admin setup another Webex training session with a couple of folks from IT as attendees so I could see the experience from that side. She used the auto-assign breakout session option and selected two separate sessions. We were divided into two groups, but didn't get any sort of popup asking to transfer audio. Each session had a presenter, who could share content to that breakout, but everyone remained in the same audio channel. All options in the audio menu were grayed out, and I didn't see any buttons to switch audio channels.

If it helps, I have attached a screenshot of the attendee view.

[EricGordon111415]

So, here are a few questions:

1. When your admin set up the training session, did he/she set it up to include audio (I assume yes, but just checking)

2. Did your breakout session presenters see their popup message about transferring audio (i.e. were some people in the breakout session able to hear or was everyone still connected to the outside/main session)?

3. Were any of the participants "call in" users rather than using integrated audio? Call in users (unless the specifically used their Attendee ID) will not have their audio transferred into the breakout session? (we explain this when we see participants who are in this situation, and we invite them to change their audio set up prior to starting the breakout sessions)

I am not sure if you can switch your audio once breakouts have started, which could explain why AUDIO options are unavailable. Typically, I have found, that when all participants are still in the same audio channel, either they are "call in" users whose audio does not transfer or the presenters of the breakout did not select the option to transfer audio. 

Feel free to send more information if I am missing something. Here is my recommendation. Recreate the issue, taking screenshots along the way to capture what you did. That way, even if you need to open a ticket with WebEx Support, you have images that capture how the session and breakout sessions were managed. I know that is an arduous process but it often either reveals a true bug or causes me to realize where I missed a step.

[dharwell]

1. We are using Webex Audio for the whole session, and can hear each other just fine. I don't see any options either when scheduling or running the session to specifically include audio for the breakout sessions. Did I miss something?

2.  Everyone was still able to hear each other. Neither the presenters nor the attendees got any message to transfer audio to the Breakout session.

3. We were all using computer audio

Thanks for your help. I'm working with another person on my team to open a support case. I'll update this when I have an answer.

[natalie.volk · Accepted solution]

we had the same problem and in our case our customer success manager could activate "sub-conferencing" in the backend.

Now it works!