Breakout rooms

How to show breakout sessions in your agenda, and how to manage each parallel track

Andy avatar
Written by Andy
Updated over a week ago

Do you have a session in which you’d like to split up the agenda into multiple rooms running in parallel? Adding breakout sessions (also known as parallel rooms) into your session will allow you to show this.

How to create parallel rooms

Breakout sessions can be created with the Breakout session button: Move your mouse over any block in your session plan, and you will see the plus icon appear on the left of that block.

When you click on the Breakout session button, a new Breakout session will be created in your session plan.

The Breakout session is created with two parallel rooms by default, but you can easily add (and remove) rooms. The rooms inside the Breakout session behave the same way as the rest of the Session Planner tool; you can create blocks and groups inside each room, and move blocks into your rooms by dragging and dropping them.

The overview bar on the left side will always represent the room that you currently have active, which is the room currently being viewed on your screen.

If you have empty gray space in the left side overview bar in your breakout session, it means that one of your rooms within the breakout session takes longer time than the one you currently have open.

How can I rename rooms in my breakout session?

You can rename the rooms of your breakout session by clicking on the down-arrow next to the title of the room:

With the new Flexible blocks, Breakout blocks can now be collapsed. If you click the arrow next to the Breakout name, you will be able to expand or collapse the Breakout section.

Adjusting the timing of your breakout session

Each room of your breakout session has its length marked next to the name of the room. The length of your breakout session – counted in the overall length of your whole session – will always equal the longest room you have in the breakout session.

When you’re finished designing your session, you may take a final look at your breakout rooms to double-check that they have equal length so you don’t have unused time in any of your rooms.

Breakout sessions in Overview and on your exports

Your breakout sessions will also be visible and editable in the Overview (if you click on the Overview button in your session’s header).

Here you will have a zoomed-out view of your breakout session, and you can navigate with arrows between the different rooms.

Breakout sessions on your export / printout

Your breakout sessions will appear also on your PDF or Word export. The rooms will be listed under each other, and a visual mark will indicate the scope of the whole breakout session.

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