Create Breakout Rooms in Teams Meetings [Quick Guide 2024]

Have you ever tried to break into groups during an online meeting to brainstorm or to improve discussion? It can be quite a hassle.

Luckily, using Breakout Rooms in Teams makes it much easier, regardless of where participants are joining from.

In this article, I’ll explain how to create and use Breakout Rooms to its full potential in Microsoft Team meetings. Let’s begin!

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How to Use Breakout Rooms in Microsoft Teams

The breakout room feature in Teams lets you collaborate with the meeting participants in a small group session. A meeting organizer can create breakout rooms during a meeting from the control panel or from the meeting details before it begins.

Follow the instructions below to understand how to create breakout rooms and how to use all of its features.

Here are the steps to use breakout rooms in Teams:

1. Create Breakout Rooms

Assuming you are an organizer or presenter, to create Breakout rooms, you have to first join a meeting, or you can set them up before the meeting starts.

Here’s how to create breakout rooms in Microsoft Teams:

Set up Breakrooms before Meeting

Launch Microsoft Teams and go to the Teams Calendar tab.
Open the meeting to which you want to add breakout rooms.
Move to the Breakout rooms tab and click on Create rooms.
Pick the number of rooms you’d like. You can choose up to 50 rooms. Then click on Add rooms.
Click on the Plus icon at the top right for additional rooms.
Select More options for a room and choose Delete to remove that room.
Select Assign participants.
Choose to assign people Automatically or Manually.

Create Breakrooms during Meetings

Join a meeting in Teams.
Choose Breakout rooms from the meeting control panel.
Pick how many breakout rooms you want.
Choose to assign people Automatically or Manually for more control. If you choose Manually, you won’t be able to assign people automatically later in the meeting.
Click on Create rooms.

Even though you can create 50 breakout rooms, do not make too many, as it will stress your CPU and RAM. But you have nothing to worry about if you perform the fixes for Microsoft Teams high CPU and memory usage.

2. Update Breakout Room Settings before the Meeting

From the Breakout room setting, you can change the presenter to manage the rooms, set a time limit to let participants know how long they can stay in breakout rooms, and automatically assign people to different rooms.

Here’s the process for updating Breakout room settings before a meeting starts:

Proceed to the Calendar tab in Microsoft Teams.
Select the meeting whose Breakout room settings you want to change and click on Edit.
Go to the Breakout rooms tab and click on the Gear icon at the top-right corner.
Assign presenter, set time limit and control moving people to different breakout rooms automatically.

3. Assign Participants to Breakout Rooms Manually

Only a meeting organizer or a presenter can manually assign participants to different breakout rooms.

Here are the steps to assign people to breakout rooms manually:

Before Meeting

Go to the Calendar tab in Teams.
Select the meeting and click on Edit.
Move to the Breakout rooms tab and select Assign participants.
Select Manually and click on Next.
Use the dropdown beside each participant to choose the Breakout room for that participant.
Click on the Assign button when you are done allocating participants to their breakout rooms.

During Meeting

Join a meeting in Teams.
Click on Breakout rooms from the meeting control panel and select Assign participants.
Select the user to whom you want to assign a breakout room. Then click on Assign and choose the room you want to move the user to.

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4. Assign Breakout Room Presenter

To manage the breakout rooms, you can appoint multiple presenters. They can add & remove rooms, enter any breakout room, recreate rooms, open & close rooms, make announcements and set room time limits.

Here’s how to assign a Breakout room presenter:

Before Meeting

Select the meeting whose Breakout room presenter you want to change from the Calendar tab and click on Edit.
Go to the Breakout rooms tab and click on the Settings icon from the top-right corner.
Toggle on Assign presenters to manage rooms and select the users you want to appoint as the presenter.

During Meeting

Click on Breakout rooms from the meeting control panel.
Select Settings.
Toggle on Assign presenters to manage rooms and select the users you want to appoint as the presenter.

5. Rename Breakout Rooms

Naming each room differently will help you understand which participant is supposed to be assigned in what room and will keep you organized.

Here’s the process to rename breakout rooms:

Go to the Breakout rooms tab from the meeting details in the Calendar tab.
Click on the ellipses (More options) of the room you want to rename and select Edit.
Provide a suitable name for the room and click on Save.

6. Set Time Limits for Breakout Rooms

If you set a time limit, the participants in breakout rooms will see the timer counting down, so they are informed when the session will be concluded and return to the meeting.

Here are the steps to set time limits for Breakout rooms:

Proceed to the Breakout rooms tab and click on the Settings icon from the top-right.
Toggle on Set a time limit and specify the breakout room session duration. You can set it from 1 minute to 23 hours.

7. Open Breakout Rooms

Breakout room organizers or presenters can open the breakout rooms, and the participants will automatically move to their designated rooms. An organizer can open and close breakout rooms multiple times during a meeting.

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Here’s how to open breakout rooms:

Join a meeting and select Breakout rooms from the control panel.
Select Open.

8. Join a Breakout Room

You can enter any room as a meeting organizer or a breakout room presenter.

Here’s the process for joining a breakout room:

Join a meeting and select Breakout rooms from the control panel.
Hover over the room you want to join, click on the ellipses and select Join room.

To leave a breakout room, select Return.

9. Communicate with Breakout Room Participants

Organizers and breakout room presenters can make announcements to all the breakout rooms at once and can enter any room to chat with certain participants.

Here are the steps to communicate with breakout room participants:

Make Announcements to All Rooms

Choose Breakout rooms from the Teams meeting control panel.
Click on the Make an announcement button.
Type in your announcement and click Send.

Chat in Breakout rooms

After entering a breakout room, click on the Chat icon to chat with the participants in that room. You can access these conversations from the main Chat tab of MS Teams.

10. Close Breakout Rooms

When an organizer closes a breakout room with the Automatically move people into opened rooms option enabled, the participants in that room will return to the meeting.

In case the option is turned off, participants can choose whether to return to the meeting or leave it.

Here’s how to close breakout rooms:

Select Breakout rooms from the meeting control panel.
Select Close.

11. View Attendance Reports for Breakout Rooms

If you are a meeting organizer in Teams, you can open the attendance reports of the breakout rooms. These reports include who joined which room and when.

Here’s the process to view attendance reports for breakout rooms:

Open Microsoft Teams and go to the Calendar tab.
Double-click on the meeting whose attendance report you want to see.
Choose Attendance.
Pick an attendee under Participants to see which breakout room they entered and when they entered and left the room.

You can also download the breakout room data in a CSV format.

FAQs

Who can create breakout rooms in Teams?

Meeting organizers can create breakout rooms in Teams, and the presenters can add & delete rooms.

How do you create a breakout room in a meeting?

To create a breakout room in a meeting, join a meeting in Microsoft Teams, select Breakout rooms from the meeting control panel, choose how many breakout rooms you want and click Create Rooms.

Why can’t I create Breakout Rooms in Teams?

If you are not the organizer of a meeting in Microsoft Teams, you cannot create breakout rooms for that meeting.