Sherlock

With the pandemic happening, it’s been tough for many organizations to adapt. We’re all supposed to be together! One way organizations have been staying together is by using Zoom Meetings.

At work, we’ve been using a knock-off reseller version called RingCentral Meetings. From looking at their competitors, Zoom has pulled out all the stops to make their meeting experience the most efficient, resiliant, rather cheapest, and reliable experience.

One of these features is “Breakout Rooms”. With breakout rooms, users can subdivide their meetings to make mini-meetings from a bigger meeting. For most of the year, there has been an odd restriction on Breakout Meetings though.

You cannot go to another breakout room as an attendee without the host reassigning you unless you are a Host or a Co-Host.

Obviously, this can result in a lot of load upon the poor user who is desginated the host. Even the Co-Hosts can’t assign users to another breakout room.

So I made a bot:

https://github.com/nelsonjchen/BreakoutRoomsBotForZoomMeetings

It’s quite a hack, but it basically controls a web client that is a Host and assigns users based on chat commands and on attendees renaming themselves.

Last night, I just finished finally optimizing the bot. It should be able to handle hundreds of users and piles of chat commands.