Breakout rooms have always been a powerful feature in Adobe Connect meetings and classrooms. The ability to break a large group of participants up into smaller groups to work on problems, brainstorm, or develop ideas has long been a key feature of our platform. Originally we decided to promote all Participants who were placed in a breakout room to be Presenters – that allowed them to turn on their cameras and microphones, whiteboard, share their screen, upload content, take notes, and do everything they needed while in the breakout session. This worked very well, except for one thing – that meant that all the participants would see the private Presenter Only Area managed by the meeting hosts. So during breakouts we decided to temporarily hide the Presenter Only Area – ensuring that private information was kept private.
However, as more and more hosts started to use the Presenter Only Area to manage users, prepare content and take notes, it became clear we needed to allow both breakouts and the presenter area to be visible at the same time. So that’s what we’ve done!
With Adobe Connect 9.5.4, we changed the way Participants are given rights to certain capabilities. Instead of being promoted to be a full Presenter, Participants are instead given all the same capabilities (cameras, microphones, screen and content sharing, etc.) without being promoted. This allows us to keep the Presenter Only Area open without worry that participants will see it, even during breakouts! Now you can manage your attendees, moving participants between breakouts without stopping the session, take notes, and prepare content and polls, all from the Presenter Only Area – and all during the breakout sessions.