Brainstorming and discussions are a common part of online corporate meetings. With multiple participants around, it becomes necessary for taking time out of the main meeting. It means people do a short meeting among themselves. This is to discuss points and ideas for the primary conference. For this purpose, Microsoft Teams has introduced the concept of breakout rooms. The Microsoft Teams breakout room was introduced towards the fall of 2020.

This feature is already present in other online conferencing apps such as Zoom. A meeting goes on for a long time. So, breakout rooms help to take some time off and share ideas and views. In this guide, I have talked about various aspects of Microsoft Teams breakout rooms. This includes creating, deleting, renaming, file sharing in a breakout room, and more. Let’s check them out in detail.

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How to Create and Manage Microsoft Teams Breakout Rooms

First, you need to use the MS Teams app from your desktop. Not everyone gets to create the breakout rooms. Only the organizer or moderator of the online meeting can create it. In fact, the moderator is the only person to control all the aspects of the breakout rooms.

  • In the meeting toolbar, click on the breakout rooms icon.
  • Under Room Settings, you can set how many rooms you need
  • You can also choose between allotting participants automatically or manually.
  • Then click on Create Rooms

Breakout rooms can be utilized only after the meeting begins. If you are the organizer and hold all controls for breakout rooms then, you must be present in the meeting.

Change Name of a Breakout Room

When you create a breakout room, it will show as Room 1, Room 2, and so on.

  • Simply click on Room 1 and then a menu will show up.
  • From that select Rename Room.
  • Then in the text field enter the name of the room.
  • Click on Rename Room.

Deleting A Breakout Room in Microsoft Teams

When you deleting a breakout room, will take the participants out of it and keep them in the main meeting.

  • Click on the Room
  • Select Delete Room

How to Open Breakout Rooms

You can individually click on the Open Rooms option on each room. Otherwise, directly click on Start rooms to automatically assign users into the rooms.

Automatically Move People into Breakout Rooms

This will automatically shuffle people into various breakout rooms that you have created. It will save your time for manual assigning of users.

  • Click on the three-dot button above the Breakout Room tab
  • Then select Settings
  • Then click on the checkbox Automatically move people into opened rooms

When users will be assigned randomly to breakout rooms, they will see a countdown timer. As the timer end, they will be automatically sent to any one of the breakout room. If auto-shuffling is not enabled, the participants will come across a pop-up asking them if they wish to join any breakout room.

Switch Participants Between Breakout Rooms

You as an organizer of the meeting can exchange users from one breakout room and put them in another.

  • Click on the room name
  • You will see the list of current participants in their present breakout room
  • There will be checkboxes beside the names
  • Select the participants you want to swap to other rooms by clicking on the checkboxes
  • Then select the other breakout room where you want to send the selected users
  • To swap the participants click on Assign.

Is it Possible to Record What is Happening in a Microsoft Teams Breakout Room?

Only the organizer can record a breakout room. For that, the moderator must be present in the concerned breakout room.

  • Go to Meeting
  • Click on the 3-dot button
  • Select Record

Keep in mind that you cannot collectively record all the breakout rooms.

How to Share Files in a Breakout Room

In breakout rooms, participants can share files within themselves.

  • Click the chat icon in the Teams windows
  • In the chat text box of the concerned breakout room, there will be a clip icon [like the one you have in Gmail to add files]
  • Click on that clip icon to upload any file or image from your device
  • Also, you can add any file from the OneDrive cloud storage from Microsoft
  • Once you browse and select your file, click on Send
  • Later to access the files that you or any other participant in the meeting has uploaded click on the option Files under the Chat icon above the main Teams window.

So, these are the various aspects of Microsoft Teams breakout room, how to create, join and do various activities related to it. I hope this guide was informative.

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