MS Teams – Creating Breakout Rooms

Breakout Rooms

Breakout rooms allow people to gather in small groups to discuss dedicated ideas.  Breakout rooms can be created from the Teams calendar and the Outlook Calendar.  Only meeting organisers on the desktop versions of Teams (Windows and Mac) can create and manage breakout rooms.

Important: You cannot create breakout rooms if there are more than 300 people in a meeting. Likewise, if you create breakout rooms before a meeting, you will not be able to invite more than 300 people.

For more info about managing large Teams meetings, see Best practices for a large Teams meeting.

Create breakout rooms before the meeting

To create breakout rooms, you must be a meeting organizer or presenter who’s been appointed a breakout rooms manage

• Go to your Teams calendar and open the meeting invite.
• Select Breakout rooms and select Create rooms
• Add rooms needed (up to 50)

• Select Assign participants and choose whether you want Teams to evenly assign people to rooms (Automatically) or assign people yourself (Manually).

• If you are the meeting organiser, you have the following options:   Select the three-dot menu to edit the Breakout Room name
  • Change the room settings and other options including managing the lobby
  • Who can present within a Breakout Room

Notes: These features are not currently available in breakout rooms:

• Call me
• Adding people to the meeting from the participant’s panel
• Adding additional people to the meeting chat
• Copying the Join meeting info

 See additional instructions on creating breakout rooms click here

1. Go to your Teams calendar and open the meeting invite.

2. Go to Breakout rooms and select Room settings  .
3. Switch the Assign presenters to manage rooms toggle on.
4. Select Search for presenters and choose who you want to be breakout rooms managers.

1. In the meeting controls, select Breakout rooms   .
2. Select Room settings  .
3. Switch the Assign presenters to manage rooms toggle on.

4. If no one in the meeting is designated as a presenter, select Go to Meeting options to add presenters and choose who you want to be a room manager.

5. Choose presenters from the dropdown menu.

6. Select the back button < to save your changes.

You might be one of a few breakout rooms managers in your meeting. Only one of you can control the rooms at a time, though.

1. In the meeting controls, select Breakout rooms   .You can see who the current manager is (for example, Noor is in control).
2. Select Manage rooms.You’re now the breakout rooms manager. Join open rooms, make an announcement, and more.

To learn more about Breakout rooms see Use breakout rooms in Teams meetings

If you’re the meeting organizer, you can delegate presenters to manage the meeting’s breakout rooms.

Breakout rooms managers can:

• Add and delete rooms

• Assign and reassign participants to rooms
• Open and close rooms
• Join any rooms
• Set time limits for room sessions
• Send announcements
• Recreate rooms