Breakout rooms – side rooms where meeting participants can be split into small groups – work for in-person meetings and video conferencing. Here’s how to set up and use the Microsoft Teams equivalent for virtual meetings.
Create breakout rooms
To create breakout rooms, start a video call and click the breakout rooms button in the meeting toolbar.
In the Create Breakout Rooms pane that opens, select the number of breakout rooms you want (up to 50), choose whether to assign attendees automatically or manually, then click Create Rooms.
If you choose to automatically assign attendees, you can skip the next section.
Assign participants manually
If you chose to manually assign attendees when creating your breakout rooms, click “Assign Attendees” in the panel that appears on the right.
Use the checkboxes to select a group of attendees to place in a breakout room, then click Assign.
Click on the room to which you want to assign the group.
Repeat this process until all attendees are assigned to a room. Any attendees you don’t assign will stay in the main meeting when you open the breakout rooms.
Open the breakout rooms
To move participants to the breakout rooms, you must open them. Rooms can be opened all at the same time or individually.
Click on ‘Start rooms’ to open all rooms at the same time.
This will open all breakout rooms and automatically move attendees there.
To open rooms individually, click on the three-dot icon next to the room and choose “Open Room” from the menu.
Participants assigned to a room remain in the main meeting until you open their room.
Take everyone back to the main meeting
The breakout rooms remain active until the meeting organizer closes them. Click ‘Close Rooms’ to close all breakout rooms at once.
Once the rooms are closed, attendees automatically return to the main meeting. The breakout rooms remain available for attendees to be reassigned later in the meeting.
