[Update: Wider launch] Google Meet rolling out support for up to 100 breakout rooms per call

Abner Li | Nov 19 2020 - 9:18 pm PT

As previewed in August, Google Meet is now rolling out breakout rooms. At launch, it’s only available to Enterprise for Education customers and meant to aid distance learning.

Update 11/19: After the initial rollout to G Suite Education, Google is bringing breakout rooms in Meet to Workspace, Essentials, Business Standard, Business Plus, Enterprise Essentials, Enterprise Standard, and Enterprise Plus customers, as well as G Suite Business and Enterprise for Education customers.

It’s still not available for Workspace Business Starter, G Suite Basic, Education, or Nonprofits.

There are also three new features. Participants in breakouts can directly ask/flag moderators for help. Meanwhile, a timer can appear as a banner in rooms, with this countdown providing a 30-second alert before going off. The last addition is support for dial-in phone and anonymous participants.

Organizers of Enterprise for Education meetings can now use breakout rooms to divide participants into smaller groups during video calls in Meet. Participants can then easily rejoin the original meeting following their smaller group discussion.

Original 10/9: This has been a highly-requested feature from educators that want to increase classroom engagement by “splitting students up for simultaneous small group discussions or working time.”

Moderators are able to jump into these conversations at any time. Admins can control the number of rooms, set a timer, and shuffle. The control panel notes how everyone is grouped with quick editing available.

You can create up to 100 breakout rooms in a call. Call participants will then be randomly and equally distributed across the rooms. You can also manually move people into different rooms.

Breakout room creation is only available on the web, but anyone with a Google Account regardless of device can join.

Google Meet breakout rooms are rolling out now and will be fully live over the next few days to all Enterprise for Education users. Google plans to make it available to other Workspace tiers in the future.