How to Use Breakout Rooms in Microsoft Teams

Breakout rooms split a big meeting into smaller groups for discussion, then bring everyone back together. They're great for workshops, training sessions, team-building and classes.

• Only the meeting organiser can create and manage breakout rooms (or someone the organiser makes a breakout room manager).
• You need the Teams desktop app on Windows or Mac. You can't create rooms from a phone or the web browser.
• Participants can join from any device.

1. Start the meeting.
2. Click Rooms (or Breakout rooms) in the meeting toolbar. It may be under ⋯ More if your window is small.
3. Choose how many rooms you want.
4. Choose how people are assigned:
• Automatically — Teams shares people out evenly at random.
• Manually — you choose who goes where.
5. Click Create rooms.

1. In the Rooms panel, click Assign participants.
2. Tick the people you want to move.
3. Click Assign and choose a room.
4. Repeat for each room.

Tip: Click ⋯ next to a room to rename it — "Marketing", "Group A" or "Problem 1" is easier for everyone than "Room 1".

Click Open (to open all rooms) or click ⋯ > Open room next to individual rooms. Participants are moved into their rooms automatically — they don't need to click anything.

As organiser, you stay in the main meeting. To visit a room, click ⋯ next to it and choose Join room. Click Return to come back.

Click ⋯ (More options) > Make an announcement at the top of the Rooms panel. Type something like "5 minutes left!" and it appears in every room's chat.

1. In the Rooms panel, click ⋯ > Rooms settings.
2. Turn on Set a time limit and choose how long.

When time's up, the rooms close and everyone returns to the main meeting automatically. Participants see a countdown.

Other useful settings here:

• Automatically move people into opened rooms — on by default.
• People can return to the main meeting — lets participants leave their room by themselves.
• Assign presenters to manage rooms — let colleagues help run the session.

Click Close rooms. Everyone returns to the main meeting after a short countdown.

You can reopen the same rooms with the same groups later in the meeting.

Save time on the day by setting up rooms in advance:

1. Open the meeting from your Teams Calendar (you must be the organiser).
2. Click the Breakout rooms tab at the top.
3. Click Create rooms, choose how many, and assign people from the invite list.

The rooms are ready to open when the meeting starts.

I don't see Rooms. You're not the organiser, you're on the web or mobile app, or the meeting is very large. Ask the organiser to make you a breakout room manager, and use the desktop app.

Someone joined late and isn't in a room. Click Assign participants, select them and assign them to a room.

People can't hear each other in a room. Each room is a separate small meeting — they need to unmute and turn on cameras again.

Click Rooms, choose a number, assign people, and click Open. Use announcements and a timer to keep things moving, and set rooms up in advance for anything important.