In order to create breakout rooms, you MUST be the meeting organizer (which means that you created the meeting).

If you plan on reusing breakout rooms, it is more efficient to have a scheduled meeting rather than use Meet Now in a Teams Channel. For scheduled meetings, the Rooms are saved, but they are not for “meet now” meetings, and therefore you must recreate rooms every time.

Creating a Breakout Room

Assigning Participants to a Room

Opening Breakout Rooms

Closing Breakout Rooms 

Visiting Breakout Rooms 

Making an Announcement 

Creating a Breakout Room

1. Within a Teams meeting, click on the Rooms icon at the top of the meeting window: 
   
2. A side bar called “Create breakout rooms” should appear.  
   
   
3. Choose the number of rooms you want to create (you can add more later!)
   
   
4. Select how you want to assign participants:
   
   1. For automatically, Teams determines the # of participants per room based on the number of people in the meeting and the number of rooms – it will try to evenly distribute the participants among the rooms.
   2. For manually, you will need to assign each participant to a room (they will not be automatically assigned).  
   3. If participants join the meeting after you have assigned the rooms (automatically or manually), you will need to manually add them to a room.
      
      
      
5. Click on Create Rooms at the bottom of the side bar:
   
   
   
6. The side bar will now convert to the “Breakout rooms” sidebar. 
   
   
7. Once you’ve created breakout rooms, if you ever meet in the same space again, the rooms will be maintained (including your assignment of participants).  To get to the Rooms sidebar, click on the same Rooms icon that you used to create the rooms.

Assigning Participants to a Room

1. Start by opening the Breakout Rooms side bar by clicking on the Rooms icon.
   
   
   
2. You should now have the standard Rooms sidebar.
   
   
   
3. Check room assignments by clicking on the arrow next to the room name (circled above) – you should see a list of all participants assigned to that room.
   
   
   
4. To assign unassigned participants or to change a participant's room assignment, click on Assign Participants (#1).  
   
   
5. To add additional rooms, if needed, click on the plus sign (#2).
   
   
6. After you click on Assign Participants (#1), a window will open that lists all the current participants and their room assignments.  Anyone that does not have a room will be listed as “unassigned”. 
   
   
   
7. Click on the down arrow next to the room assignment to get a list of available rooms.  Select the room that you would like to assign the participant to. 
   
   
   
8. Once you’ve selected the room, you’ll see a window giving the new room assignments.  Click on Assign to save the room assignments, or on Cancel to return to the original assignments.  This will also return you to the main window. 
   

Opening Breakout Rooms 

1. To open all rooms, click on the open (#3) button.
   
   
   
2. You should now see a message that the rooms are opening. 
   
   
   
3. Participants will be automatically moved into their rooms, and will see the following message.
   
   
   
4. Once the process is complete, you will see “open” under the room name in green text.  Only rooms with participants will be opened.  
   
   
5. Click on the arrow next to the room name to get a list of the participants that have been assigned to the room. All participants that are present should now be shown as “In meeting”.  Any participants that are not present or are not in the room, will be still be listed, but without the "In meeting" tag.

Visiting Breakout Rooms 

1. To access the breakout room meeting, click on the three dots for the room. 
   
   
   
2. You should now get a list of room specific options.  Click on Join room (#1) to enter the breakout room.
   
   
   
3. You will be automatically transferred to the room.  Make sure you check your Mic and Camera settings upon entering the room – you may need to adjust them.
   
   
   
4. When you want to leave the room, click on Leave.  You will be returned to the main meeting space. 
   
   
5. Once you are back in the main meeting space, you must click on Resume.  Otherwise, you will be in a holding space – you will not be able to interact with anyone else in the meeting space.  You might not even see that others are present. 
   

Closing Breakout Rooms 

1. To close all the breakout rooms, click on close (#2).
   
   
   
2. You should now see a message that the rooms are closing. 
   
   
   
3. Participants will be automatically returned to the main room, and will see the following message.
   
   
   
4. To close an individual the breakout room, click on the three dots for the specific room (#3). 
   
   
5. You should now get a list of room specific options.  Click on Close room (#2) to close the breakout room.
   
   
   
6. Participants in the individual room will be automatically returned to the main room.

Making an Announcement 

1. To make an announcement, click on the megaphone icon (#2).  
   
   
   
2. A box will pop up where you can type your announcement.
   
   
   
3. Once you have typed your announcement, hit send to send it to all the rooms.
    
   
   
4. You will get a message saying that the the announcement was sent.
   
   
   
5. Participants should see the announcement on their screen.
   
   or  
   
   
   
6. The announcement does disappear very quickly (it will be there fore maybe 5 seconds), but it will also be in the chat.  A chat notification will appear.
   
   
   
7. To view the chat, click on the chat icon, and the chat sidebar will open.
   
   Any announcements will be automatically marked as important. 
   
   
8. For participants meeting via their phone, the chat notification will be given via the chat icon and/or the three dots.
   
    
9. To get to the chat, click on the chat icon.
   
   
   
10. If they click on the three dots, they will get to a menu, where they will again be able to click on the chat icon.