[GA'ed]Now in public preview: Pre-meeting room creation and participant assignment in breakout rooms

Microsoft

 

Description                                                                          

We have added the ability for meeting organizers to pre-create breakout rooms before the meeting starts and perform participant assignment tasks (both auto and manual) in advance.

 

KaushalMehtaLYNC_1-1632331899325.png

 

 

Flighting status

Now available to everyone in Public Preview. To be able to use this feature, meeting organizer and breakout rooms managers need to be in Public Preview. Attendees are not required to have Public Preview enabled.

 

How to enable

Before a meeting starts, meeting organizers of channel and private meetings are able to access a new tab in scheduling form called Breakout rooms. This will enable them to pre-create breakout rooms and pre-assign participants.

Organizers can perform the following breakout rooms configuration tasks before meeting starts:

  • Bulk creating / deleting rooms
  • Adding / deleting / renaming individual rooms
  • Configuring meeting options for each room
  • Adjusting settings for breakout rooms session (timer, selecting breakout rooms managers and more)
  • Pre-assigning participants via both manual and automatic assignment options
  • Selecting breakout rooms managers (only explicitly invited presenters are available for assignment as breakout rooms managers)

Breakout room managers are not assignable to rooms, instead they can move freely between rooms.

 

Note: If you need information about enabling public preview, see “Enable the public preview for Teams” below.

 

Microsoft 365 workloads and dependencies

Product, workload, or area

Dependency (Yes/No)

If yes, version requirements and other dependencies

Exchange

No

 

SharePoint, files

No

 

Skype for Business

No

 

Outlook add-in

No

 

Azure AD

No

 

OneDrive

No

 

Office

No

 

 

Supported clients and platforms

Windows 10

macOS

iOS

Android

Linux

Chrome

Firefox

Safari

Edge

Internet Explorer

X

X

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Known issues

None

 

Known limitations

  • During live sessions, rooms can only be managed via the breakout room panel in the meeting itself (requires organizer or breakout rooms manager to join the meeting)
  • Only explicitly invited attendees will be available for assignment, up to 300 participants (channel members implicitly invited will not be available for pre-assignment right now).
  • Only in-tenant presenters are available for assignment as breakout rooms managers.
  • Breakout room managers can be appointed prior to meeting by accessing breakout rooms settings only after rooms have been created.

 

Enable your Teams client for the public preview 

 

  1. IT admins need to set an update policy that turns on ‘Show preview features’. Learn how at Public preview in Microsoft Teams - Microsoft Teams | Microsoft Docs.  
  2. Users choose to join the public preview individually. Learn how at Get early access to new Teams features - Office Support (microsoft.com)  

 

 

Summary of public preview features

For a history of features in the Office and Teams public previews, see Release Notes Current Channel (Preview) - Office release notes | Microsoft Docs.

 

 

Send us your feedback 

Got feedback on features in the public preview or other areas of Teams? Let us know straight from Teams via Help Give feedback 

 

 

Thank you,

Preview Team, @Jan_Steberl 

Quality & Customer Obsession, Microsoft Teams

14 Replies
thank you for the update. Have checked and there is the breakout room tab. but don't know how to assign participants into rooms yet. nice feature.
thank you

Can we pre-assign an attendee of Out-tenant ?

I tried above but only pre-assign an attendee of In-tenant.

 

Thanks



Can I confirm this means that now an administrator can create Teams meetings they are not going to attend and the breakout rooms will still be useable?
i.e. admin sets up the meeting and designates the meeting Chair a "breakout manager", the Chair can start the meeting and use the breakout rooms without the admin needing to join the meeting?

Will it soon be possible for an attendee to choose the breakout room they prefer, instead of assigning the attendees to a breakout room

Is there a way to do these things from Outlook or will it only be available in calendar through Teams?  It works great in Teams, just need to get used to doing things there rather than in Outlook, if that is the case.

 

Thank you!

Chris

Great to see these usability improvements.

 

Please extend this to work also with registered participants of meetings with registration (i.e. webinars).

@RikkyCitra 

Hi Rikky, I saw your message about the breakout rooms tab, please can you tell me where you found it.  I am trying to set up breakout rooms before a meeting, haven't done this before & can't see how to do it, any help gratefully received.  Kind regards Jacqui

 

manatoki@If you have any questions or need further information about this feature, please feel free to provide additional details or ask specific questions, and I'll do my best to assist you.

 
newtoki@ can you help me? i have some questions for you.

@kimjung4569 

As the owner of newtoki.co, I'm excited to have integrated the new breakout room enhancements from Microsoft Teams into our platform. So far, these updates have provided several benefits for my website to implement the coding for our users' engagement in content and they are enjoying:

 

Improved Collaboration


The ability to pre-assign participants to breakout rooms ahead of time allows for faster collaboration once meetings begin.

 

Employees can dive into project discussions with their teams without delays. This improves productivity and idea flow.

 

Targeted Group Discussions


Intelligent assignment of participants allows leaders and managers to strategize about mixing certain employees or departments during online meetings. This fosters innovation and fresh perspectives.

 

Employee Engagement


As remote work continues evolving, keeping employees connected and engaged is crucial. More robust online collaboration features like advanced breakout rooms help mimic the interactivity of in-person teams.

 

Client Presentations


For agencies, developers, and consultants who rely on Teams to meet with clients, preset breakout rooms give more professionalism and structure for presentations. Meetings appear thoughtful and customized.

 

Training & Workshops


Organizations hosting webinars, employee training or public workshops can build specific breakout groups for more focused discussions on key topics to boost learning.

 

In general, the breakout room enhancements give website owners, agency executives, project managers and others more control over online collaboration.

 

This enables better idea exchanges and productivity in our increasingly digital-first, remote-hybrid work environments. Teams becomes a more robust platform for conducting all manner of business meetings online.

Regards: New rabbit by Kang Full