Forum Discussion
Breakout Rooms for Microsoft Teams
- Apr 03, 2020
Jeffrey Allen there is a roundabout way to do with as many breakout rooms / small groups as you want, but it must be set up in advance. I made https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qo6yqh7erEY&hd=1 aimed at teachers, but I've included the steps below too.
- In the Team where you want breakout rooms, create a new Channel for each breakout room.
- Open the Outlook desktop app, click into the Calendar, and then click 'New Teams Meeting' to generate a link to a new video chat.*
- Copy the 'Join Microsoft Teams Meeting' link from the Calendar invite, and paste it into the first channel / breakout room.**
- Repeat this same procedure for each breakout room / channel. It's important to generate new links for each group, or else everyone will end up in the same video chat.
- The teacher / owner of the Team can see all of the private channels and enter any breakout room they want.
Some caveats: this creates the video call as a 'Chat'--the video calls aren't being hosted within the Team itself. So any transcript of the meeting conversation will live inside the 'Chat' (not in the 'Team' itself). Additionally, while it's possible to re-use the same breakout rooms, I think anyone who has ever entered the room at any time (a) will always have access to it from the Chat tab (even if you have removed them from the private Channel), and (b) may get notifications showing the text conversations (even if you have removed them from the private Channel).
*We don't have Exchange Online accounts, but if you do, I believe step 2 can be achieved more easily without exiting Teams by clicking on the 'Meeting' button from the left-side toolbar.
**I find that it works best to paste the link into a new conversation. I tried creating a new Website tab at the top of the Channel and pasting the link, but this added some steps. When I clicked the link from the Website tab, it opened the meeting in my web browser, and then I had to click 'Open in Desktop App' (or something along those lines) before being brought into the video chat. Oddly, the only method that automatically loaded the video chat in the desktop app was pasting the link into a new conversation.
Jeffrey AllenAlso looking for breakout rooms in Teams… 😞
Any workaround until MS Will release the functionality?
I'm exploring creating different channels within a team, for each room….
- BongeJoeApr 10, 2020Copper Contributor
Manu_Lanuza and Jeffrey Allen have a look at the workaround that some of our Science Teachers discovered for this. It is a bit more set up on the front end of a Teams Meeting, but works way better than Zoom's breakout rooms (which can only record the main room but not what's on in the breakout sessions). Note: In order to achieve the editing pencil in #3 you need to post something to the chat (i.e. expectations, instructions, etc.). Have a look and please share!
- Jeffrey AllenApr 14, 2020Silver Contributor
BongeJoe, thanks for this breakdown. I have created group chats before but didn't think of this as a way for breakout rooms. I'll pass this along to the others. I've been posting all of the various options that have been posted here to a Teams 101 channel. Still hoping for official breakout room features but this and the others are great! Microsoft is more secure than Zoom and more compliant so I'd rather stick with Teams than go with Zoom!
- JonathanSteemanApr 10, 2020Copper ContributorThanks Joe for your Reply and engagement.
I have tried that but its not user friendly. And my experience with these breakout sessions is that attendees don’t want to be recorded in the breakout sessions. The breakout sessions are mostly used for personal creative generation processes and recording them would negatively influence that. If you have not already why not give zoom a go to see how easy it is. The Teams workaround way sounds great because you can use the tools subscribed by the company policy, but its relies on to many user things. This needs to flow. At least that is the feedback I get. Also users are starting using their own tools like Zoom without company policy. Not good for DLP