Breakout Rooms are available in Microsoft Teams meetings. Use Teams Breakout Rooms to partition and organize your meetings more effectively. Meeting organizers can assign attendees to separate ‘breakout rooms’ and send them from the main Teams meeting when ready.

• 🔗 More details and FAQ on Teams Breakout Rooms on Microsoft Teams blog
• 🔗 Support article for Teams Breakout Rooms for Education
• 🔗 Educational Technology’s Breakout Rooms handout in Word (download and edit)

Some additional notes:

• ✅ Currently only meeting organizers can create breakout rooms only from Microsoft Teams Desktop app for Windows and Mac.
• ✅ Breakout Rooms will work for all meetings type in Microsoft Teams, including Channel meetings and recurring meetings.
• ✅ The organizer sets up the Breakout Rooms, assigns the attendees, and Starts or Opens the rooms (on the desktop client only).​
• ✅ The meetings start and attendees get all of the Teams meetings features like Together mode, Whiteboard, Live Captions, and more.
• ✅ The meeting organizer can join Rooms at will to check on small groups. Currently, only the meeting organizer has this capability, so co-teachers or TAs do not.
• ✅ The meeting organizer can set a timer on your Breakout Rooms
• ⏩ Coming Soon: the ability for meeting organizers to assign another presenter as the organizer (only one at a time)

How-to Video

Watch this video How to use the NEW Breakout Rooms in Microsoft Teams meetings for a step-by-step tutorial. Learn how to create, rename, join, start and close Breakout Rooms in Teams plus lots more. See the Microsoft Teams Breakout Rooms experience from both the organizer and the attendee perspective.

Breakout Rooms Practice Sessions

Educational Technology offered 30 minute practice sessions on how to use the new Microsoft Teams Breakout Rooms feature with the experience of being moved into a breakout room and back to the main meeting. Access the Agenda for the Sessions.

• Watch the recording of our Tuesday, February 9^th session (in Stream)
• Watch the recording of our Friday, February 12^th  session (in Stream)

Training session Teams Meetings: Breakout Rooms and Polling

The Microsoft trainer-led session demonstrated Teams meetings including creating a meeting, the newly released Breakout Rooms feature, plus soliciting feedback from attendees through live polling with Forms. See our Topics page for details (Word doc you can download).

• Watch the recording of the Tuesday, January 19 Microsoft Teams Live Event (in Stream)