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.
This is the killer feature of Zoom that draws people away from Teams. Teams is a versatile product that is both "known or fixed team productivity" (a la Slack) AND broad video chat (a la Zoom). The work around above of using channels sort of works in the fixed team model (although not really what Zoom does). That does not work in a broader video chat/webinar model.
In Zoom you can quickly break the whole group into break outs for a timed amount and automatically close the breakouts and bring people back together. I was only recently exposed to it, but it is FANTASTIC. It is 100% needed for offsite type meetings, Design Thinking workshops, facilitated sessions.
It is unfair to Teams to compare it to Zoom, as Zoom does not do all the things Teams can do. Buuuuut, if Teams is going to play in the broader video chat use case like Zoom, it needs to get this feature fast. Like yesterday.
My .02
Specialization
Did Microsoft went a different route when competing against Slack when creating a threaded way of collaborating? I can see how threaded working is a killer app feature that is important for businesses. I don’t see small businesses or consumers benefit from this. It did made Teams a much bigger application. Zoom on the other hand is light and does not have the treaded workspace and seems to be primarily focussed on effective meetings. At the moment It looks like Zoom specializes in Effective meetings where Microsoft is specializing in effective collaboration for businesses. Is that gap closable? I think yes!
Ease of use
My experience with using the Zoom Breakout rooms feature is that its so easy to setup that technology is adding value here rather than technology is standing in the way. Its enabling people to use a complex feature very efficiently. No high user skills are required. There is also a very low learning curve. After 2 test calls the skill is learned. Then the meering host is also able to join each room individually to check how things are going ( huge opportunity to make this easier because its a little bit cluncky) The Break out eooms feature definitely is a killer feature and the workarounds suggested for teams to mimic this feature is way to clunky. Not scalable and very user unfriendly, it will distract people from the contents of the meeting.
Privacy concerns Zoom not blocking
Even the recent privacy concerns will not stop people from using it. Its crazy! I use Zoom every single day and it has been a way to bring people together in these times. These people previously never heard about zoom at all. Overall I think this is a humungous opportunity for Microsoft and the users of Microsoft Teams.