Breakout rooms are a great way to get the most out of your Microsoft Teams meetings. They allow you to break out of the group chat and have more focused discussions. Here are four tips for using breakout rooms in your meetings:

  1. Set Up a Breakout Room Before the Meeting Starts If you want to use a breakout room, make sure you set it up before the meeting starts. This will allow everyone to know about it and join in if they want to. You can do this by using the “Create Breakout Room” button on the team’s home page or by clicking on the “Breakout Rooms” tab on the left-hand side of any team’s page.
  2. Use Breakout Rooms When You Need More Focus If you’re having trouble staying focused in a group chat, try breaking out into a breakout room. This will give you more space to talk and focus on one topic at a time. Plus, other members of your team can help keep things organized in the breakout room.
  3. Keep Track of What’s Happening in Each Breakout Room If there are multiple breakout rooms happening at once, it can be hard to keep track of what’s going on in each one. To make things easier, use sticky notes or whiteboards to note which breakout room each conversation is taking place in. This way, you won’t have to search for conversations later on when you need them." How To Use Breakout Rooms In A Microsoft Teams Meeting ..

Breakout rooms—side rooms where meeting attendees can split into small groups—work for in-person meetings and video conferences. Here’s how to set up and use the Microsoft Teams equivalent for virtual meetings.

Create Breakout Rooms

To create breakout rooms, start a video call, then click the breakout rooms button in the toolbar of the meeting.

In the “Create Breakout Rooms” panel that opens, select the number of breakout rooms you want (up to a maximum of 50), choose whether attendees will be assigned automatically or manually, and click “Create Rooms.”

If you chose to assign attendees automatically, you can skip the next section.

Assign Attendees Manually

If you chose to assign attendees manually when you created your breakout rooms, click “Assign Participants” in the panel that appears on the right-hand side.

Use the checkboxes to select a group of attendees you want to put into a breakout room, then click “Assign.”

Click on the room you want to assign the group to.

Repeat this process until all attendees have been assigned to a room. Any attendees you don’t assign will remain in the main meeting when you open the breakout rooms.

Open the Breakout Rooms

To move attendees into the breakout rooms, you have to open them. Rooms can be opened all at once or individually.

To open all the rooms at the same time, click “Start Rooms.”

This will open all the breakout rooms and move the attendees into them automatically.

To open rooms individually, click the three-dot icon next to the room and choose “Open Room” from the menu.

Attendees who are assigned to a room will stay in the main meeting until you open their room.

Return Everyone to the Main Meeting

The breakout rooms will run until the meeting organizer closes them. To close all the breakout rooms at the same time, click “Close Rooms.”

Once the rooms are closed, the attendees will automatically be returned to the main meeting. The breakout rooms will remain available for attendees to be assigned to again later on in the meeting.

Don’t worry; if you’re ever using Google Meet or Zoom, those have breakout rooms as well.