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Manage breakout rooms by opening, closing, and sending announcements as needed.

Quick reference

Breakout Rooms - Part 2

Continue setting up breakout rooms in Teams to enable small group conversation. 

When to use

We use breakout rooms whenever we want to facilitate small group work in a meeting. 

Instructions

In Part 1, we saw how to create breakout rooms and get Teams to automatically assign participants. As the meeting organizer, we have complete control over the breakout rooms. 

Managing Breakout Rooms

  • Join the meeting. 
  • Click the Rooms button. 

This will show the breakout rooms and the number of participants assigned to each room. By default, the rooms will be closed. As the meeting organizer, we get to decide when to open the breakout rooms and which breakout rooms will be opened. 

Assign New Meeting Participants

In our example, we created the breakout rooms prior to the meeting commencing. Only the people listed in the calendar invite are assigned to breakout rooms. If more people join the meeting after the rooms have been created we can simply assign them to a room by clicking Assign participants and choosing a room. 

Create More Breakout Rooms

We may decide once we are in the meeting that we need more breakout rooms. Not a problem! Simply click the Add room (+) icon and create a new room. Then, click Assign participants to assign people to the room. 

Let Presenters Manage Rooms

By default, only the meeting organizer can manage breakout rooms. However, we may wish to give the presenter access to do this.

For example, I may not have organized the meeting but I'm presenting the content. I would like the ability to manage the rooms as I am effectively running the meeting. 

  • Click Room settings (cog icon). 
  • Toggle on Assign presenters to manage rooms. 
  • Search for the presenter.

Open Breakout Rooms

When we first join a meeting with breakout rooms, all participants are in the main meeting until the meeting organizer or presenter opens the breakout rooms. We can choose to open all breakout rooms or individual rooms. Notice the word 'Closed' next to the breakout rooms. 

  • Click the Open button to open all rooms. 

To open individual rooms, click the three dots next to the room and choose Open. 

Once the breakout rooms are open, the meeting organizer can dive in and out of any of the rooms by clicking the three dots next to the breakout room and choosing Join. 

Posting Announcements to All Breakout Rooms

As the meeting organizer, we can post announcements to the breakout rooms. This can be useful in many scenarios, for example, you might want to let all participants know that they have 2 minutes left to complete the exercise. 

  • Click the Make an announcement icon.
  • Type the announcement. 
  • Click Send. 

Announcements will also be posted in chat and marked as high importance. 

Close the Breakout Rooms

When we want to bring all participants back to the main meeting, we can close the breakout rooms. 

  • Click the Close button.
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  • 00:04 So now if we join this meeting by clicking the join button in the top right
  • 00:09 hand corner, we can take a look at those
  • 00:11 rooms by clicking on breakout rooms in that main menu.
  • 00:15 So when I click this, it's going to open up this little breakout rooms panel, and
  • 00:21 I can see my breakout rooms below, and I can see who's been assigned to each room.
  • 00:26 If I expand, I can see all of the members of that room.
  • 00:31 Now, if I'd already assigned all of these people to these meeting rooms prior to
  • 00:36 the meeting.
  • 00:37 And then more people join this call, if I want to assign any new joiners
  • 00:42 to these meetup rooms, I can simply click on assign participants.
  • 00:46 And this is going to show me everybody who is currently part of this call.
  • 00:50 So if there was somebody new who joined after I'd created these rooms,
  • 00:55 I could simply select them and then choose which room I want to assign them to.
  • 01:00 I can even create new breakout rooms on the fly whilst we're in this meeting.
  • 01:05 So if I decide I need another one, notice we have a plus just above,
  • 01:10 I can click on it and create a brand new room.
  • 01:13 Currently this is called room three, let's click on the three dots and
  • 01:18 rename it because I want this one to be called Team C, and click on rename.
  • 01:23 Currently this room is empty, but if I wanted to assign somebody to this room,
  • 01:28 again, I can just click on assign participants.
  • 01:31 I can assign any new people that have joined or
  • 01:35 I can resign somebody who's already in a room.
  • 01:39 So maybe I want to put Ben into the room for Team C,
  • 01:43 I can simply click the drop down, select Team C and
  • 01:47 click on assign, and that's going to move him to that room.
  • 01:52 And it's worth noting here that only meeting organizers and
  • 01:56 presenters can assign people to rooms.
  • 01:58 But in order for a presenter to assign people you need to make sure you have
  • 02:02 that setting toggled on.
  • 02:04 And I know that I come across this situation fairly frequently.
  • 02:08 A lot of the time it will be my client who sets up the Team meeting, so they will be
  • 02:12 the meeting organizer, but I'm the presenter who's presenting the content.
  • 02:17 And I'm also the one who needs to have the ability to manage people and
  • 02:21 breakout rooms.
  • 02:22 So if you want your presenter to be able to create breakout rooms and
  • 02:26 assign people, you need to click on the cog just here to jump into your room
  • 02:31 settings and make sure you have this top option toggled on.
  • 02:35 Now, currently everybody who's assigned to a meeting room isn't
  • 02:40 currently in their room, everybody is still in that main meeting.
  • 02:44 Also note that all of the rooms are currently showing as closed.
  • 02:48 And that's because you as the presenter or
  • 02:51 organizer have control of those rooms and you can open them whenever you like.
  • 02:56 So it might be we need to do a bit of a discussion first of all in this meeting,
  • 03:00 and then I want to send everybody off into the separate breakout rooms to work on
  • 03:05 an exercise.
  • 03:05 So at that point I would open all of the breakout rooms.
  • 03:09 Now I can choose to open these rooms individually, so if I just want
  • 03:14 to open the room for Team A, I can click on the three dots and open the room.
  • 03:19 Most of the time, you're going to want to open all rooms at the same time,
  • 03:24 so you can simply click on the open button.
  • 03:27 That's going to open all of the rooms and
  • 03:29 it's going to assign people into those separate rooms.
  • 03:33 Once those rooms are open, the members of those rooms can have discussions with each
  • 03:38 other, and nobody else in the other rooms can see what they're talking about.
  • 03:42 If you're the meeting organizer, you can dive in and
  • 03:45 dive out of any room at any time.
  • 03:47 So maybe you want to check on the progress of team A, as the organizer,
  • 03:52 you can click on the three dots and simply join the room.
  • 03:56 You can also post announcements to every single breakout room.
  • 03:59 So maybe, I want to tell everybody that there's two minutes left of
  • 04:03 this exercise and then they need to return to the main room.
  • 04:07 So notice we have a little speaker button just above if I click this,
  • 04:11 I can make an announcement.
  • 04:20 And when I send that out it's going to be posted to all of the rooms and
  • 04:24 everybody can see it.
  • 04:26 And any announcements you make as the meeting organizer will post to
  • 04:31 the chat panel as a message and will be marked as high importance.
  • 04:35 Now once the exercise is over, and you want to bring everybody back to
  • 04:40 the main room, you can close the breakout rooms.
  • 04:43 Again, you can do this individually, we can click the three dots and
  • 04:47 close each room individually.
  • 04:49 Alternatively, we can close them all.
  • 04:52 So let's click on close, is going to close off those rooms and
  • 04:57 bring everybody back to the main meeting.

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