Create and Manage Breakout Rooms

Purpose 

Breakout rooms are a great tool to help you move meeting participants into different groups to discuss topics during the meeting. You can open and close rooms more than once during a session or move participants between rooms. Only meeting organizers using the desktop versions of Teams (Windows or Mac) can create and manage breakout rooms. 

Video Tutorial

Explanation

• Open the Teams app and Create a meeting.
• Once the meeting has been created and users have been invited, you can join the discussion by going to your meeting on your Team's calendar and click the Join.
• Select the Breakout rooms icon from your meeting control once you and your invitees are in the meeting.

• Select the number of rooms you would like to create from the dropdown.
• Choose whether you would like Teams to assign students to rooms Automatically or Manually if you would prefer to assign students to rooms yourself.
• If you have chosen to assign the students automatically, just click Create Rooms.

• If you have chosen manual selection, choose the participants who will share a breakout room by checking the checkboxes next to their names.
• Select the down arrow next to "Assign" and choose a room for them.

• Repeat the previous steps until everyone in the meeting is assigned to a room. When you are done, select Assign.

Rename Rooms

If you want to rename your breakout rooms to something that reflects its purpose (for example, what the people in that room will be working on), follow these steps:

• In the meeting controls, select Breakout rooms.
• Hover over the room and choose the More options icon (...) > Rename room.

• Enter the new name and select Rename room.

Using Breakout Rooms

By default, meeting participants are moved to their assigned rooms as soon as you open them.

• In the meeting controls, select the Breakout rooms icon.
  • To open all the rooms at the same time, select Open.
  • To open a single room, hover over the room, select the More options icon (...), and choose Open room.
• In the meeting controls, select Breakout rooms.
• Hover over the room and select More Options, then Join the room.
• Leave a breakout room.

Interact with Participants

As the meeting organizer, you can send announcements to all the breakout rooms and contribute to any room chats. You may want to tell everyone the remaining breakout session time, offer discussion ideas, or give general updates.

• In the meeting controls, select Return.
• Click on the Breakout rooms icon.
• Select Make an announcement.
• Enter your announcement and select Send.
• Participants are notified in their meeting chat to check for your announcement.

Breakout Rooms Chat

• Each breakout room has its own chat.
  • All the chats are available in your main Teams Chat list.

• Here you can chat with the members of any breakout room.
• Once you join a breakout room, you can also select Chat in the room to chat with the people there.

Return to Main Meeting

By default, this setting is off. Turning it on gives participants the option to leave their breakout rooms and return to the initial meeting to rejoin the larger discussion.

• In the meeting controls, select the Breakout rooms icon.
• Select Room settings.
• Switch the Let people return to the main meeting toggle on.
• Select the Back button icon (<) to save your changes.