New in Sequel: Breakout Rooms

At Sequel.io, we’re always striving to make virtual events more engaging and interactive. Today, we’re thrilled to introduce Breakout Rooms, a new feature that allows hosts to divide their audience into smaller, more focused discussion groups during a live webinar. This powerful tool is designed to enable customer success teams, event organizers, and educators to foster deeper connections and facilitate more meaningful interactions.

The Power of Breakout Rooms

Imagine a scenario where your webinar audience is highly engaged, but the Q&A is getting crowded. Or perhaps you want your sales or customer success team to have a more personalized discussion with attendees. With our new Breakout Rooms feature, you don’t need to pre-plan or set up additional sessions. You can enable Breakout Rooms on the fly, creating an environment where attendees can interact freely, ask questions, and share their thoughts in smaller, more intimate groups.

Key Benefits of Breakout Rooms for Your Webinars

1. Enhanced Audience Interaction: Breakout Rooms allow you to create a setting where attendees feel more comfortable to speak up and participate. This is particularly beneficial for webinars that include Q&A sessions, customer feedback gatherings, or educational seminars that encourage group work and discussions.
2. Direct Access to Experts: CS, product or sales teams can use Breakout Rooms to connect directly with attendees, helping them troubleshoot issues or answer questions one-on-one. This ability to have direct conversations helps build stronger relationships and can significantly boost customer satisfaction.
3. Flexibility and Control for Hosts: The Breakout Rooms feature can be activated at any point during a webinar, providing ultimate flexibility. Hosts can create rooms, automatically assign users, and move them around as needed, making it easy to adapt to audience needs in real-time. You can seamlessly bring everyone back to the main session whenever you’re ready to wrap up or transition back to the core webinar content.
4. No Pre-Planning Required: Unlike other platforms that require advanced setup or attendee pre-assignment, Sequel.io’s Breakout Rooms can be enabled instantly from the Settings menu. This allows you to adapt your event based on the flow of the conversation and audience engagement.
5. Modern Browser Support and Scalability: Our Breakout Rooms feature works seamlessly across modern browsers like Safari, Firefox, Chrome, and Edge. With support for up to 1,000 participants, Sequel.io can accommodate large webinars, though we recommend using smaller breakout groups to keep discussions more manageable.
6. Engagement Tools Included: Attendees don’t have to sacrifice interactivity when they enter a Breakout Room. All core engagement tools—such as live reactions, hand-raising, screen sharing, chat, Q&A, and CTAs—are still available within the Breakout Room environment, ensuring that the conversation stays lively and productive.

Getting Started with Breakout Rooms

• Enable Breakout Rooms from Settings:
  Navigate to the Settings tab and turn on the Breakout Rooms feature. This can be done anytime, even while a webinar is in progress.

• Initiate a Breakout Session:
  At any point during your webinar, click the Breakout button. A confirmation screen will appear, and once confirmed, all attendees will be directed to a pre-call screen. Here, they can set up their camera, audio, and enter their name before joining the breakout session.

• Join the Initial Room:
  Once setup is complete, all attendees will see a call setup screen then join a single breakout room. They will be muted by default, ensuring that the transition is smooth and disruption-free. From here, as the host, you can either begin a conversation in the main room or proceed to break the attendees into smaller groups.

Setting Up Your Breakout Session

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When you’re ready to split the audience into multiple rooms, press the Breakout button at the bottom of the screen to access the Breakout UI, which offers a range of options for organizing your audience:

• Create Multiple Rooms:
  Select the number of rooms you wish to create. This can range from a few small groups to several rooms, depending on the size of your audience and your engagement goals. The UI will automatically calculate the number of people per room based on total users.

• Assign Attendees Automatically or Manually:
  Use the Auto Assign feature to distribute attendees evenly across rooms, or manually assign individuals using the intuitive drag-and-drop interface. You can adjust assignments at any time, even after the breakout session has started.

• Start the Session:
  Once you’ve set up the rooms and assigned participants, you can press Start breakout session to begin.

Managing the Breakout Experience

During the breakout session, you’ll have access to a control panel showing all rooms and participants:

• Move Attendees in Real-Time:
  Need to reshuffle participants? No problem. You can drag and drop attendees between rooms in real-time, making it easy to adapt based on the flow of conversations.
• Join Any Discussion:
  As the host, you can jump into any room with a single click, making it easy to monitor discussions or provide input where needed.
• Respond to Help Requests:
  Attendees have the option to click a “Request Help” button if they need assistance. You’ll receive a notification, and with one click, you can join their room to address any questions or provide support.

Ending or Transitioning Out of Breakout Rooms

When it’s time to wrap up the breakout session, you have several options:

• Bring Everyone Back to the Main Room:
  Use the “End Breakout” option to bring all participants back to the main webinar session. You can set a timer, giving attendees 60 seconds to conclude their discussions, or you can choose to end the session immediately.
• Restart or Create New Breakout Sessions:
  If you want to continue with a similar setup or create a completely new breakout experience, you can restart the session with the same rooms or a new configuration. This allows you to facilitate multiple rounds of discussions or different topics within a single event.
• Return to the Main Webinar Experience:
  Once you’re done with breakouts, click the End Breakout button to seamlessly transition back to the main webinar, where you can resume your presentation or continue with a larger group discussion. No additional action is required from attendees, making the transition smooth and effortless.

Key Features for Seamless Breakout Management

• Drag-and-Drop Interface:
  Easily manage participant placement and room assignments with a simple drag-and-drop UI.
• Host Controls:
  Mute all attendees, kick out disruptive participants, or block bad actors—all from the host panel.
• Engagement Tools in Breakouts:
  Live reactions, screen sharing, chat, Q&A, and other webinar tools remain accessible in each breakout room, ensuring high engagement and interactivity.

Ready to Get Started?

We’re excited to see how our customers will leverage Breakout Rooms to create more engaging and interactive experiences. Whether you’re hosting a webinar, a training session, or a company-wide meeting, Breakout Rooms can help you make the most out of your virtual events.

To start using Breakout Rooms, simply head to the Settings tab during your next webinar and turn on the feature. If you have any questions or need support, feel free to reach out to our customer success team.

Breakout Rooms are now live and available for all Sequel.io customers. Don’t miss out—take your webinars to the next level with this game-changing feature!

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