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Breakout Rooms for Microsoft Teams
Is Microsoft planning on creating breakout rooms for Teams meetings? If so when? I noticed a post in uservoice and it says it is planned but no timeline and I don't see it on the M365 Roadmap, so checking here. https://microsoftteams.uservoice.com/forums/555103-public/suggestions/35000044-introduce-breakout-room-functionality
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 a video tutorial 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.
I’ve read through the suggestions here. There are some good ones! As I see it, there are three different workarounds for having breakout rooms in Teams:
1. Use channels
This would require a team to exist with the people in it you need for the session..
For it to work, you would create the needed channels and then just add a scheduled meeting in each channel. No need to go to Outlook calendar for that, just schedule the meeting directly in Teams.
Great if it’s a class, but maybe a bit overkill to create a whole team, if it’s only for one meeting with people who wouldn’t otherwise interact.
2. Schedule x different meetings
Use Teams or Outlook to schedule x different simultaneous meetings. Send out the links to all participants and when the time comes, just tell them to go to the appropriate meeting and use it like a breakout.
This way you don’t need to create a team. Just use Outlook and you could even invite people to all of the breakouts or only select people so as to distribute them in advance.3. Call up from a group chat
You could simply create a group chat for each group that need to talk to each other and then have them add voice - or you could have them create the group chat themselves. The advantage of you creating the chat is you can jump around.
This approach has more of an ad hoc feel and still doesn’t require a team and channels,
I do agree, however, that a more native way of supporting breakout rooms for a given meeting would be good, just as long as it doesn’t make the UI overly complex. But I also do feel like there ARE workarounds that could work.
I’d love to hear thoughts about these suggestions, as I must admit I haven’t tried any of them yet.
Has this happened? Does microsoft teams have break out rooms now? Jeffrey Allen
deblange, not officially but there are workarounds listed in this thread.
- Yeah we have the same problem at my org. Zoom was chosen due to breakout rooms being available. We have 450 people breaking out into 6 or 7 member groups as a main meeting. We are already rolling out Teams internally but in this emergency situation Zoom was chosen due to the lack of features in 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 a video tutorial 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.
Hi what you have put is very thoughtful but so clunky (no reflection on you but on MST). All my 'students are non-employees, and will vary with each event I run. I do so wish MST would make this a whole heap easier than it is for those of us who run workshops and small meetings across multiple organisations and as independent facilitators. dm12345
Maria64, coming in the fall, Microsoft will officially have breakout rooms as a part of Microsoft Teams. They announced this last month.
dm12345 Thanks for this. A question....when you create the links to put in the channels, won't the meetings show up for the kids in their calendars? It looked like you weren't paying a special attention to the time when creating those links. My kids depend on the date to prompt them when to join. By creating the group channels, I'm wondering if that will show up that they have 2 meetings? and be confusing with the time, especially if you re-use the links. I hope that makes sense!
Thanks for any clarification.
kstreelman, this is a great question. Our students use Gmail (we're hoping to transition them to Exchange Online soon), so I don't know as much about how Teams connects to the Outlook calendar. This is worth testing, but I think you're good to go as long as you don't add the students to the Outlook calendar/meeting invitation and simply close the calendar invite without saving. Once you copy the link, you can use it with people who haven't been specifically added to the meeting invitation. So I use the Outlook calendar meeting button only for the purpose of generating a link, and then I discard the original meeting invitation.
dm12345 Thanks for this I will test and see if I can replicate. Once I figure out how to get the right licence enabled.
We need this asap.
Staff are turning to zoom against our advice and despite secturity concerns.
Rob et al,
I would not recommend using Zoom...while yes they have breakout room feature, it is tedious to manage if you want to assign people to specific breakouts and is NOT feature rich...meaning it's pretty basic.
I 100% agree with Microsoft needing to get the breakout room features in place asap, though. In the meantime, I believe a better alternative to what Zoom currently offers (until Microsoft adds more) can be seen in demo video here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUUbA53ouSo
J4man I personally like Zoom a lot. I am not really sure what you mean by "not feature rich". I have all I got and actually the Breakout Rooms are easy to use if you have done it a few times.
Anyway. Breakout Rooms are one of the major features that is missing in MS Teams when compared to Zoom. would really love to see it.
What are your concerns regarding security? I'm not an IT pro, se please keep it simple.... for my simple mind!
- Also very interested in a MS answer to this question. It's a real weakness compared to Zoom.
Jeffrey Allen
Vote cast 👍Jeffrey Allen That would be nice! We handle it by creating one or more breakout channels in the class team for the purpose; ex meeting I meeting II ...
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.
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
- Hopefully this Breakout rooms feature will be released with priority. I’ve been using the zoom breakout session feature and also teaching it to other people that are struggling with their businesses to reinvent their way of working and training. The way companies work nowadays with Agile makes the breakout session very productive. Together with 3rd party collaboration whiteboards Working agile from home is awesome! I’ve seen the benefits of this feature of making online education AMAZINGLY more effective.
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.
Liina_FreivaldMicrosoft
Jeffrey Allen for the time being solution with channels may work. Here is an instruction for the organizer. Includes document co-authoring and presentation of resulting poster in the main room. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUUbA53ouSo
ThanksLiina_Freivald . That will help for the time being. I really don't want to introduce another tool in conjunction with Teams as i think this will confuse people.
I have 3 short additional questions:- Can you start a recording in each channel simultaneously?
- What's the difference between opening the .ppt in Teams vs. browser?
- When showing your screen in Teams, how can I get the sound to be played on the viewer end, ex. when showing a Youtube clip?
Incidentally, I found 2 companies in Sweden that are digital meeting place providers.
One I know uses Zoom on the backend where you can rent a digital meeting room.
I believe this trend will continue so it would be nice to get some sort of timeframe from Microsoft on when breakout rooms may be coming in Teams.
1. No, you (or any participant) need to start the recording manually in each room.
2. Not sure if I understand you correctly but if you open the presentation in the browser and share your screen you are "in control" of the presentation. If you share the presentation directly in the Teams meeting the default setting is that the participant can move back and forth in the presentation on their own if the like to.
3. There is a functionality to share system audio when you share a screen. There is a small icon in the bar at the top (appears when you move the pointer) when you share for activating system audio share.
Thanks!Liina_Freivald, I like that temporary workaround idea but it does limit to 3 "breakout rooms" which might work for some of our users but I hope Microsoft adds a feature or at least ups the limit of meetings above 4 (1 norm and 3 meet now).
Jeffrey Allen I'd love to know if there is any update on breakout rooms being added to Teams, currently having to consider zoom as a better alternative to run virtual learning sessions
