If you plan on using Zoom for virtual office hours, you may want to use breakout rooms to avoid possible interruption from others entering your Zoom room. How to:

First, you will want to enable breakout rooms for your account. To enable the breakout room feature:

- Sign in to the Zoom web portal (umd.zoom.us).
- In the navigation menu, click Settings.
- Navigate to the Breakout Room option on the Meeting tab and verify that the setting is enabled.
- If the setting is disabled, click the toggle to enable it. If a verification dialog displays, choose Turn On to verify the change.

- Click the checkbox to allow meeting hosts to pre-assign participants to breakout rooms.

Now that you have the breakout rooms enabled, you will want to set up your room to use them for your virtual office hours. If you are using your PMI (personal meeting ID) for office hours, once logged into the Zoom client click "New Meeting". Your Zoom meeting will begin using your PMI. At the bottom of the Zoom window you will now see a new icon titled "Breakout Rooms". Once your attendee arrives in the meeting room you will want to click the "Breakout Rooms" icon at the bottom of the screen.

A new window will open where you can create breakout rooms. You will want to chose the "manual" option in this particular scenario.

Click "Create Rooms" at the bottom of the window. Another window will open where you can assign attendees to the breakout rooms. Click "Assign" for the breakout room and select the checkbox next to the attendees name.

After this, you will click "Open All Rooms" at the bottom of the window.

After opening the rooms, you will then be able to "join" the breakout room. This breakout room will be private for you and the attendee, and any user that joins your PMI will go into the "main" room without interrupting the breakout room. You can navigate between the breakout room and the main room, keeping the breakout room for uninterrupted one on one conversation.