Breakout Management

breakoutzonesbreakout-roomsbroadcastingaudio-isolation

Breakout zones split your Ripple into separate areas where small groups can interact independently. Each zone has its own audio — participants in one zone can't hear those in another.

Activating Breakouts

To enable breakout zones:

:rba    — activate breakout zones
:rbd    — deactivate breakouts (return to main)
:rbt    — toggle breakouts on/off

When you activate breakouts, the zones you've designed in the editor become active. Participants are isolated into their respective zones.

When you deactivate breakouts, everyone returns to the main area and can hear each other again.

How Audio Isolation Works

When breakouts are active, audio is isolated at the server level — participants in different zones are completely unsubscribed from each other's audio tracks. This isn't just muting; the audio data is never sent to participants in other zones, which saves bandwidth and ensures privacy.

Broadcasting Across Zones

As a facilitator, you can broadcast your audio and screen share across all active zones. This is useful for:

  • Making announcements during breakout discussions
  • Sharing instructions that all groups need to hear
  • Presenting content that all zones should see

Broadcasting capabilities are available to participants with broadcast_audio and broadcast_screen permissions (typically editors and moderators).

Zone Occupancy Visibility

Facilitators can see how many participants are in each zone, even zones they're not currently in. This helps you:

  • Monitor whether groups are balanced
  • Check if any zone needs attention
  • Decide when to end the breakout session

Tips

  • Design zones in the editor first — breakouts use the zones you've set up in your Ripple. Make sure you have zones configured before trying to activate breakouts.
  • Give clear time limits — tell participants how long the breakout will last. Use a timer (:tc 10m) alongside breakouts so everyone knows when to expect to come back together.
  • Use broadcast sparingly — interrupting breakout discussions too frequently defeats the purpose of small-group work. Save broadcasts for essential announcements.
  • Combine with shuffle — shuffle participants into different zones each round to ensure people work with different groups.