How to set up and use a breakout room in Teams?

Here’s a question from Ravi:

I have been assigned to manage a newly created team in a project. But before I discuss the roles and responsibilities of each members, I need to identify the qualities of each member in the team. So I’m planning to conduct a contest among the team to achieve it. As we have already started working from home, I have to conduct it using an online collaboration tool we use, Microsoft Teams. Can you help me on how I can set up breakout groups and use it?

Thanks for your question. Yes we can setup breakout groups manually in teams. Please follow the steps below.

Set up Breakout rooms

  • Open your Microsoft Teams and create a team to setup breakout groups.
  • Once created, click on ellipsis icon and select Add channel.
  • Enter a Channel name and Description of your choice (If necessary).
  • Click Add.
  • Click the channels accordingly with the amount of teams you need.
  • Now go-ahead and add the members to the team you just created.

Use breakout rooms

  • You can click on Meetup icon from top right corner in the general channel and ask everyone to join the meeting.
  • You can discuss with the team on what the task is going to be and how the contest is going to be conducted.
  • Either post the instruction message in General channel on who belongs to which breakout group or you can pass the instruction orally to them on the meeting.
  • Start the meetup on breakout Group A.
  • You can directly go on and select the breakout Group B to start the 2nd meetup.
  • Follow the same procedure on all the breakout groups.
  • Once you are done with meetup on all the breakout groups, you can toggle on each channel meetup accordingly while you will remain on hold on the other channels.

Hope the procedure on Breakout rooms in Teams is helpful. Thanks!