After what seems like forever, one of the most requested features of Microsoft Teams, Breakout Rooms is finally rolling out. Over the next few weeks, if they don’t have it already, users will see a new meeting joining experience and Breakout Rooms will be available to use in both Team and ad-hoc meetings in Teams.

The organizer of the meeting will now see the new Breakout Rooms icon beside the usual participants, chat and hands-up icons while in a meeting and will have the option to set up rooms from there.

Clicking the Breakout Rooms icon will open up the Breakout Rooms menu where we choose how many rooms to create initially (up to 50) and if we want to automatically assign users or manually. The number of rooms can also be changed later if more are required.

If we choose automatic assignments Teams will do the work for us, if we choose manual, we get a nice menu where we can choose users to group and assign them to a room.

Once out users are assigned, we then open the room to send them into the breakout session.

Once the room is open, the organizer has the option to join and leave rooms as required. This is useful for checking on progress.

While in the Breakout Room, participants will join as presenters and have the usual meeting features expected from a Teams meeting such as screen sharing etc.. They will also have the option to return to the main room when they are done.

When the organizer wants to return everyone to the main meeting, they can close out one or more rooms and everyone will be brought back.

That’s pretty much it. It’s great to see this feature rolling out to commercial tenants and no doubt will be a widely used feature, particularly with the large amount of remote work and training required this year. For more information on Microsoft Teams Breakout Rooms, check out the below link.

Breakout rooms generally available today in Microsoft Teams – Microsoft Tech Community