Teams rooms - Thematic self selection

[TeodoraZ]

Hi, I will be leading a workshop with 30 to 60 participants on Teams. I'd like to designate thematic break out rooms for discussion and allow participants to self-select based on their expertise and interests which room to join. Is this possible? What is the best way to do this without spending a lot of admin time to ask for everyone's interest during the call, writing down their names and then designating them to rooms?

[#2 · Accepted solution]

Currently a participant cannot select a breakout room this way. There's a feedback item over at the Teams feedback portal https://feedbackportal.microsoft.com/feedback/idea/1e497837-282e-ec11-b6e6-00224827bbc2 you can vote on.

You could possibly, as a workaround, use a Webinar registration form to capture the information you need and then create your breakout rooms and use that meeting link (and not the Webinar link). The registration form is associated with the Webinar event but at least you'll be able to get an idea of in which room a participant should be put into.

For assistance you can assign breakout room managers, so you don't have to do it all yourself.