Breakout Rooms in Microsoft Teams
In an online classroom, fostering open discussions and meaningful idea exchange can be challenging. Microsoft Teams’ Breakout Rooms feature allows educators to divide students into smaller groups for more focused conversations and collaborative activities without needing to leave the main meeting. This feature makes it easier to create interactive learning experiences that promote deeper engagement and participation.
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Facilitates Small Group Discussions: Breakout rooms allow students to discuss ideas, collaborate, and problem-solve in small groups, mimicking the dynamics of in-person group work.
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Perfect for Brainstorming Sessions: Orgnaizers can easily organize students into breakout rooms for brainstorming, project collaboration, or peer feedback activities, boosting creativity and interaction.
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Manage Rooms Before or During Class: Meeting organizers can set up breakout rooms either before or during a session, providing flexibility to adjust groupings as needed.
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Instructor Control: Only meeting organizers can create and manage breakout rooms on the desktop version of Teams, ensuring control over how and when students are divided into smaller groups.
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Monitor and Support Groups: Meeting organizers can join individual breakout rooms to observe or assist students, ensuring that everyone stays on track and receives guidance when needed.
The breakout rooms feature in Microsoft Teams allows people to gather in small groups for lively conversations and brainstorming sessions without having to join another meeting. Only meeting organizers using the desktop versions of Teams can create and manage breakout rooms. This can be done:
- Before a meeting
- During a meeting
Before a Meeting
If you plan to assign participants to breakout rooms before the meeting starts, you can pre-assign them instead of doing it during the meeting. Pre-assigning breakout rooms can only be done with the Microsoft Teams desktop app and with a few conditions. These conditions to pre-assign breakout rooms are:
- Participants must be directly invited to the meeting
- You must be the meeting organizer or a co-organizer
- Your meeting must've been scheduled through the Teams app or Outlook
Please note that only participants who are directly invited to the meeting can be pre-assigned to breakout rooms. For participants who join via a link, meeting ID, or phone call, assignment to breakout rooms must wait until the meeting has started.
To pre-assign breakout rooms:
1. Go to your Calendar in the MS Teams desktop app
2. Locate and open the meeting invite
3. Select the Breakout Rooms tab
4. Choose the number of rooms you want, up to 50, and select Add rooms.
- Use the + button to create more as necessary.
5. Select Assign participants
6. Choose whether you want MS Teams to evenly assign people to rooms (Automatically) or assign people yourself (Manually)
- If "Manually" was chosen, assign each person to a room or choose Shuffle to assign everyone randomly.
Adjusting Breakout Room Options and Settings Before a Meeting
Breakout Room Settings
Once the breakout rooms have been created for a meeting, meeting organizers can plan and adjust room settings before the meeting, which creates and names rooms, automates room placement, sets timers, and more. To adjust room settings:
- Open the Breakout Rooms tab within the meeting invite.
- Select the gear icon
- Adjust Breakout room settings as needed and select Save when finished.
Breakout Room Options
Room Options are different than Room Settings, as they allow more granular control over participant permissions while they're in the room. While options aren't mandatory to adjust, this provides meeting organizers with flexibility in their execution of breakout rooms. Here, you can adjust participants' abilities to record or present in the breakout room, use their cameras and microphones, manage a lobby, and more. Each room can have its own configured options.
- Open the Breakout Rooms tab within the meeting invite.
- Create your rooms if they have not been created already.
- Select the three dots within the room tile.
- Choose Room options.
- Adjust room options as necessary and choose Save when finished.
During a Meeting
There is no need to plan ahead of time, as MS Teams allows meeting organizers to create and manage breakout rooms in any scheduled meeting on the fly. To use breakout rooms in a meeting:
- Start your meeting.
- Select the Rooms button
found with other meeting controls.-
Don't see Rooms? You are either using the web version of Teams or aren't a meeting organizer. Switch to the desktop version and/or contact the meeting organizer to be added as a co-organizer.
- Choose the number of rooms you want to create.
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Choose whether you want MS Teams to evenly assign people to rooms (Automatically) or assign people yourself (Manually).
- There is currently no option to let participants choose their own rooms. This is planned for a Fall 2024 release date
- Select Create Rooms.
Managing your Breakout Rooms
Once rooms have been created, you can use the Rooms menu 
to manage, remove, open, join, rename, or assign rooms.
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Assign participants: Use this option to open the assignment menu, assign each person to a room, or choose Shuffle to assign everyone randomly.
- You can use this same menu to move participants to different rooms during the meeting.
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Create Room: This + button can be used to create more rooms.
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Announcement: Send an announcement to breakout rooms, such as updates or prompts.
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Remove Rooms: Deletes all breakout rooms at once.
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Settings: Allows you to add timers, automate entry into rooms, and more.
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Open: Open the rooms and
- By default, participants will be moved into assigned breakout rooms automatically with no action on their end.
Open Breakout Rooms
Do not open rooms until you are ready to start your breakout room activity/session. Opening the rooms will, by default, automatically send participants to their assigned rooms. MS Teams allows you to open rooms individually or at once, giving organizers flexibility.
Open Rooms Individually
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Select the Rooms button
- Hover over the room and select More options
- Select Open.
Open all Rooms at Once
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Select the Rooms button
- Select Open.
Joining Breakout Rooms
Meeting organizers and co-organizers can hop in and out of breakout rooms to monitor and discuss with the participants. To join a room and check on its progress:
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Select the Rooms button
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Hover over the room and select More options
- Select Join.
Select Return when you're ready to leave the breakout room and return to the main meeting.
Closing Breakout Rooms
When you close a breakout room, the participants will automatically return to the main meeting. MS Teams allows you to close rooms individually or at once, which can be useful in situations where groups are finished with an activity or discussion before the rest of the group.
Close Rooms Individually
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Select the Rooms button
- Hover over the room, then select the More options
- Select Close.
Close all Rooms
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Select the Rooms button
- Select the trash can icon to close all rooms at once.
FAQ
Are there any limitations to the breakout room feature?
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You can't create breakout rooms if there are more than 300 people in a meeting. Likewise, if you create breakout rooms before a meeting, you won't be able to invite more than 300 people.
- There's currently no way to let participants choose their breakout room.
- There's no way to share video or audio to a room. You (the meeting organizer) must join that room to share this content.
If I have a recurring meeting, do I need to set up breakout rooms each time?
No. Breakout room assignments will carry over to the next meeting until they're changed or a room is deleted. This can be a good or bad thing depending on the purpose of your meeting, as the chat and breakout room chats are recorded and reused.
Can someone share a link to a specific breakout room?
No. Sharing a link or inviting individuals into a breakout room is not supported, so only participants in the meeting who are placed in a room can participate in that room.
How can I, a meeting organizer, chat with participants in a breakout room?
Each breakout room will have its own chat. Organizers and room participants will be able to access it from the Chat menu in the breakout room window and through the Chat menu in their MS Teams app. Here's how it works:
- Participants will be added to a breakout room chat when you open the room, by default, and removed when the room is closed.
- You will have access to all breakout room chats.
- After a breakout room is closed, so is the chat; no more messages can be sent.
- All organizers, co-organizers, and participants can still access the chat history and shared files to their assigned room after the breakout room is closed.
Do breakout rooms show up in the attendance reports?
Yes. Upon viewing the attendance report after breakout rooms were utilized, you can learn which breakout room each person has joined, when they entered it, and when they left. Learn more about attendance reports in Microsoft Teams.
