How do I use breakout rooms?

Updated on Jun 27, 2025

Creating breakout rooms for groups within a meeting
Joining a breakout room
Leaving a breakout room and returning to the meeting
Closing the breakout rooms

Creating breakout rooms for groups within a meeting

You can use a breakout room (a separate meeting space) in a Teams Meeting to create a virtual room for groups of students during your meeting. You divide the attendees of your meeting into groups that each get their own meeting where they can discuss with each other. As the lecturer, you decide who is in which group, or you can have Teams randomly distribute the attendees among the groups. You can also predetermine the time during which students can discuss in the breakout rooms.

Creating breakout rooms for groups prior to a meeting

Go to the calendar in Teams and double-click the meeting.

Click the tab Breakout rooms.
If this tab is not visible, click +number behind the row of tabs and click Breakout rooms in the menu that appears.
In the window that appears, click Create rooms.

Choose the number of breakout rooms you need.
Click Add rooms.

Click Assign participants.
Choose whether participants are assigned automatically, or assign them manually. You can also choose for participants to determine their own room.
Click Next.

Creating breakout rooms during a meeting

Click Rooms.
Choose the number of rooms.
Choose whether participants are assigned automatically, or assign them manually. You can also choose for participants to determine their own room.
Click Create rooms.

Manually assigning participants

Once you have chosen to assign participants manually you will get the Assign Participants option under meeting spaces, click on it.
Check the participants you want to assign.
Choose a breakout room to which you want to assign the participant.
Optional: Click on Shuffle to randomly assign the participants in the list, you can adjust this afterwards manually in step 3.