Breakout rooms, polls, webinars and attendance

Meetings can do more than one big call. This chapter explains breakout rooms for work in small groups, polls and questions to involve everybody, webinars for large audiences with registration, and the attendance report.

Everything that manages these features – creating rooms, polls, moderating questions, starting a webinar, reading the attendance report – is reserved for the hosts of a meeting: the organizer, co-organizers and space admins.

Breakout rooms#

Open the Breakout rooms panel (German UI: Breakout-Räume) under Panels in the control bar.

Creating and filling rooms#

1. Choose the Number of rooms (Anzahl Räume) and how people are distributed: Evenly (Gleichmäßig), Randomly (Zufällig) or Manually (Von Hand).
2. Options:
   • Participants choose (Teilnehmende wählen selbst) – everybody picks a room.
   • Allow returning (Rückkehr erlauben) – participants may go back to the main room on their own.
   • Move automatically (Automatisch verschieben) – assigned people are moved when the rooms open; otherwise they get a question "Join the breakout room?".
   • Timer with a Warning before the end (Warnung, for example 60 seconds before).
3. Click Create rooms (Räume anlegen). You can rename rooms, add rooms and drag people between them. People who join later appear under Not assigned (Nicht zugewiesen); Distribute evenly places them.
4. Click Open breakout rooms (Breakout-Räume öffnen).

While the rooms are open#

Participants see a bar at the top of the call with the room name, the remaining time, Ask for help (Hilfe anfordern) and – when allowed – Back to the main room (Zurück zum Hauptraum). Before the end they get a warning with a countdown.

As a host you can:

• Join any room and switch between rooms at any time – you see who is where.
• See help requests: a message says "Help is needed in the room …" with a button to go there.
• Send an Announcement to all rooms (Durchsage an alle Räume) – as text banner or as voice announcement (Sprachdurchsage starten): your microphone is heard in all rooms at the same time, like a radio call, for up to 60 seconds.
• Extend the timer (+5 minutes) or stop it.
• Close the rooms: everybody gets a 30-second countdown and then returns to the main room. Bring everybody back (Alle zurückholen) does it immediately.

The meeting chat is shared by all rooms. Recordings only cover the main room.

Transcript and summary of breakout rooms#

When transcription is on, every breakout room gets its own transcript. On the meeting page the Transcript tab has a Room selector (Raum). After the rooms close, the AI writes a short summary per room (if AI is enabled for the space); the Summary tab lists them under Breakout rooms, and the main summary takes them into account.

Polls and questions#

The Polls & questions panel (Umfragen & Fragen, under Panels in the control bar) has two tabs.

Polls#

Hosts click New poll (Neue Umfrage), enter the question and 2 to 10 answers and choose:

• Multiple choice (Mehrfachauswahl),
• Anonymous (Anonym) – nobody, not even the hosts, can see who voted what,
• Show results (Ergebnisse zeigen): Right away (live) or Only after closing (Erst nach dem Beenden).

Launch (Starten) opens the poll for everybody, Save as draft (Als Entwurf) keeps it for later. Participants vote in the panel and can change their vote while the poll runs. Close (Beenden) ends it.

Questions (Q&A)#

Everybody can Ask a question and upvote questions of others; Top (Beliebt) sorts by votes. Hosts can Approve (Freigeben), Mark as answered (with an optional written answer), Pin (Anheften), Dismiss (Ausblenden) or delete questions. In the meeting settings (when scheduling or in the call) hosts decide under Questions (Q&A):

• Allow questions (Fragen erlauben),
• Allow anonymous questions (Anonyme Fragen erlauben) – then Ask anonymously appears,
• Approve questions first (Fragen vorher freigeben) – new questions are only visible to hosts and the author until approved.

After the meeting the Summary tab shows the results under Polls and Questions & answers; hosts can export both as CSV.

Webinars#

A webinar is a meeting for a large audience. When you schedule a meeting, choose Webinar instead of Meeting at the top of the dialog (this cannot be changed later).

Stage and audience#

• The organizer, co-organizers and presenters are on the stage: they can speak, share their camera and screen.
• The audience joins muted without camera. Attendees can raise their hand; a host can then Let speak (Wort erteilen) from the participants panel and later Revoke (Wort entziehen).
• Only the stage is shown in the call. The participants panel lists On stage and Audience with a search.
• Polls and questions work as in every meeting.

Waiting room and start#

Attendees who arrive early wait in a waiting room ("The webinar starts soon") with the start time. Hosts and presenters are already in the call (Backstage) and can test everything. Start webinar (Webinar starten) lets the audience in; a recording configured to start automatically starts now.

Registration#

Under Webinar registration (Webinar-Anmeldung) you can require a registration (needs a start time and the permission to invite guests):

• Seats (Plätze) – how many people can register; Waiting list (Warteliste) – further people are put on a waiting list and move up automatically when somebody cancels.
• Questions in the registration form – your own questions, optionally required or multi-line.

The registration page has its own link (Copy registration link in the Registrations tab of the meeting). After registering, people get an e-mail with a personal join link and a calendar file; the e-mail also contains a link to cancel (the join link itself cannot cancel; cancel links from e-mails sent before October 2026 no longer work – cancel on the registration page while signed in, or ask the organizer). On the webinar page the Registrations tab (Anmeldungen) shows everybody with status, answers and whether they attended; you can move people up from the waiting list, cancel registrations, send the link again and export the list as CSV.

Attendance report#

In Business and Enterprise spaces Coviqo records when each participant joins and leaves a meeting (every time, also guests). Hosts find the report on the meeting page in the tab Attendance (Teilnahme): who attended, role, first join and last leave, all join/leave times, the total duration and – for webinars – whether the person had registered. For recurring or restarted meetings the report shows the latest session (Termin); pick another one, or All sessions together (series) for the whole series. Invited people who did not join are listed for each session, people who joined by phone as Phone … 347. Export CSV downloads the session you are looking at.

Participants are told before they join ("Your attendance (join, leave, duration) is recorded …"). The data is deleted after the period set by the organisation (365 days by default).