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What are Breakout Rooms?
- 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
How Do I Use Breakout Rooms in Teams?
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
- Ensure the "New Meeting Experience" feature is turned on
- Go to Teams > Settings > General > Turn on new meeting experience
![](https://support.westernu.edu/TDPortal/Images/Viewer?fileName=4afe3380-f2f1-4d69-9662-b1463c68415a.JPG)
- 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
![](https://support.westernu.edu/TDPortal/Images/Viewer?fileName=316f50ff-aeb5-4e09-ac90-3ee43f3eda0e.JPG)
- 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"
![](https://support.westernu.edu/TDPortal/Images/Viewer?fileName=77463d52-e71d-4108-99f4-d8a6823673ab.JPG)
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
![](https://support.westernu.edu/TDPortal/Images/Viewer?fileName=ba86c667-3896-434c-8afb-3fdc3479949c.JPG)
- 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
![](https://support.westernu.edu/TDPortal/Images/Viewer?fileName=0e2f7dcc-e86a-477d-bd78-abf647bce409.JPG)
- 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"
![](https://support.westernu.edu/TDPortal/Images/Viewer?fileName=b88e908f-4b62-4df1-95cc-b0b6cd374dde.JPG)
![](https://support.westernu.edu/TDPortal/Images/Viewer?fileName=475d60c5-e634-45fd-8ce6-9d72739d625c.JPG)
- 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
![](https://support.westernu.edu/TDPortal/Images/Viewer?fileName=85f5177e-1508-46b5-bcab-e25145039224.JPG)
Additional Information