Making Your MS Teams Meetings Interactive with Breakout Rooms

There are some important things to be aware of before creating breakout rooms: 

• Only meeting organizers on the desktop versions of Teams can create and manage breakout rooms
• Whether you are on the desktop, web or mobile, all participants can join a breakout room.

1. Once in the meeting, click the Breakout rooms icon:

2. Choose how many rooms you need (max 50) and whether you want Teams to allocate the attendees automatically or whether you wish to allocate them manually.

3. Click create rooms, and the Breakout rooms panel will open.

4. You can rename your rooms by clicking the three dots and clicking 'Rename Room'.

Optional: Prior to starting a breakout room you can change your room settings by clicking on the Elipsis.

9. Next, select Room Settings:

Make all necessary changes like allowing participants to return to main meeting and setting a time limit.

To return to Breakout Rooms click the settings arrow.

10. To start your rooms click Start. 

Attendees will receive a 10 second warning that they are about to leave the main meeting and join a Breakout room.

Once the meeting has started, the host can join any Breakout room, click the ellipsis for the room they wish to join and click Join. To return to the main meeting (participants and host) click Return:

11. To call all of the attendees back to the main meeting click Close.  

The attendees will be given a 10 second warning before being returned to the main meeting.

The same security options and policies apply to breakout rooms because they are Teams meetings.