Using Breakout Rooms in MS Teams

• Breakout rooms allow a meeting organizer/instructor to split attendees into multiple online rooms for discussion and collaboration in Microsoft Teams
• Allows you to breakout into smaller groups for:
  • Group projects
  • Small case studies
  • Class assignments
  • Member collaboration
• Create up to 50 breakout rooms per meeting
• Breakout room participants can return to the main meeting at any time to ask questions, without disturbing the breakout room discussion
• Meeting organizers can:
  • Choose to create breakout rooms automatically or manually, as well as rename and delete rooms as needed
  • Choose to re-create the same rooms within the same meeting for more breakout sessions
  • Join any active breakout room
  • Switch attendees to different breakout rooms
  • Send announcements to the breakout rooms
  • Recall all participants back to main meeting
• Meeting attendees can:
  • Use Together mode to make the breakout session feel more interactive
  • Use Microsoft Whiteboard to draw out ideas
  • Share their screens for collaboration
  • Share any files in the main meeting that were used or created in the breakout session
  • Utilize the chat feature in the breakout room
  • Users cannot choose their own room, they must be assigned by the meeting organizer

To create breakout rooms, you must:

• Be the meeting organizer
• Be signed into the MS Teams Desktop client with your WesternU credentials
  • This is the installed version, and not the web version available at go.westernu.edu
  • Teams can be downloaded for free here
  • NOTE:  Attendees can attend from either the web or installed version, but the meeting organizer must use the installed version to create breakout rooms
• Ensure you are using the latest version of Teams by checking for updates
  • Instructions for checking updates can be found here
• Ensure the "New Meeting Experience" feature is turned on
  • Go to Teams > Settings > General > Turn on new meeting experience

• Have enough attendees to allow for breakout sessions
  • This feature is not beneficial for 2-3 member meetings
• Be in the active meeting to create breakouts rooms
  • You cannot pre-create the breakout rooms prior to the meeting

Creating Breakout Rooms

• Enter active meeting
• When you are ready to move attendees to their breakout rooms, select the Breakout Rooms icon at the top of the meeting window

• Choose your breakout room settings
  • Number of rooms (up to 50)
  • How you'd like the participants to be assigned (automatic or manually)
  • Select "Create Rooms"

Managing Breakout Rooms

• Assign participants as necessary
  • Late attendees will need to be assigned by the organizer
  • You can see unassigned attendees in the "Assign Participants" section of the panel

• If you need to re-create the rooms completely, select the ellipses at the top of the panel and select "Recreate rooms"
  • This will delete all current rooms and place the attendees back into the main meeting
  • You may then choose to create them automatically or manually

• Rooms Settings allow you to:
  • Choose to automatically move participants to rooms
  • Choose to allow participants to return to the main meeting at will, rather than you manually returning them to the main meeting
  • To change these settings, select the ellipses at the top of the panel, and select "Room settings"

• Apply settings as needed

• Each room can be managed individually
  • Select the ellipses next to the room name
  • Here you may join, open, rename, close, or delete a room

• Learn how to use Teams here
• Check for Teams updates here