Forum Discussion
Breakout Rooms for Microsoft Teams
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 Allen Could you please go into more details. I have been asked about breakout sessions also.
PKeller80, a breakout room would allow you to assign people to a smaller group to meet for part of a session that would have audio/video and screen sharing and then you can bring them back to the main meeting. You could also in advance assign people to a particular break out group. Posted above, there is a sort of workaround but it is limited to 3 breakout groups and wouldn't necessarily allow you to sign users in advance to a particular group. I hope that is what you were looking for.
Jeffrey Allen There is no limitation to three breakout rooms. The limitation that applies is that you can only be attending four meetings simultaneously (active in one and on hold in three). But there is nothing stopping you from having more rooms.
ParLinderoth Ah hah! Thank you. I got the disappointing message the other night to hang up in order to start new room and thought it meant 4 was max. Now see that as TEACHER I can only be in no more than 4 eg on hold while checking in with others. Easily solved by hanging up in some. Good to know.
ParLinderoth, thanks for the clarification about attending 4 meetings at a time.
