Can you use breakout rooms for free on Teams?
Once the breakout room discussions are complete, the organizer can close those rooms and participants can reconvene the main meeting to present their ideas and inputs to everyone. This feature of Microsoft Teams is available only to the paid users of Microsoft 365.
Breakout rooms can only be created in meetings that have fewer than 300 attendees. In addition, creating breakout rooms in a meeting automatically limits the number of meeting attendees to 300. Advise your end-users to not initiate breakout rooms in meetings where they expect more than 300 participants.
Only meeting organizers on the desktop versions of Teams (Windows and Mac) can create and manage breakout rooms. Organizers or presenters must first join the meeting to create or manage breakout rooms.
Only meeting organizers using the desktop versions of Teams (Windows or Mac) can create and manage breakout rooms. Notes: Organizing a meeting with breakout rooms is currently only available in the Teams for Education desktop app for Windows or Mac.
Microsoft Teams now offers breakout rooms functionality. This means that the organiser of a Teams meeting (and only the organiser), has the option to create breakout rooms and assign participants to separate 'rooms' for more targeted small-group discussions.
For team managers: How to join a breakout room
By navigating to the breakout rooms icon, managers and hosts can see a list of the rooms in operation, select 'More options' next to the room they want to join, and select 'Join room. ' Similarly, click 'Return' to the meeting in the controls panel to exit the room.
Breakout rooms allow you to split your Zoom meeting in up to 50 separate sessions. The meeting host can choose to split the participants of the meeting into these separate sessions automatically or manually, and can switch between sessions at any time.
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Limitations of Breakout Rooms.
| Number of breakout rooms | Maximum number of participants who can be assigned to breakout rooms* |
|---|---|
| 30 breakout rooms | Up to 400 participants |
| 50 breakout rooms | Up to 200 participants |
Click the Meeting tab. Under In Meeting (Advanced), click the Breakout room toggle to enable it. If a verification dialog appears, click Enable to verify the change. Note: If the option is grayed out, it has been locked at the account level, and needs to be changed at that level.
As long as breakout rooms are enabled in the web portal in your personal "Settings" tab, the option should display. If it still isn't displaying, try uninstalling and reinstalling the Zoom application.
Which platform is best for breakout rooms?
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PSTN participants can join breakout rooms and hear an announcement. PSTN participants can join back to the main room and hear an announcement after breakout rooms are closed (manually closed or timer ends).
Microsoft Teams and Zoom both allow up to 50 breakout rooms, but Zoom's increased capacity means you can invite more users per session. The Zoom Meetings Enterprise plan—available to organizations with 50 or more users—comes with Webinar 500.
Breakout rooms allow a meeting organizer to split your attendees into multiple online rooms for discussion and collaboration in Teams. Meeting organizers who schedule a meeting can create breakout rooms in advance then pre-assign members to the breakout rooms.
Minimum Number of Participants
For the breakouts option to be available to the meeting organizer, there must be at least five participants in the meeting. While people calling in by phone can't join breakouts at this time, they do count towards the five-person minimum.
Breakout sessions are usually short, say 30 minutes. But it depends on your case. So, assess how much time your participants will need to reach the objectives of the session. Make sure you won't use necessary time of your main meeting and you don't overlap with other sessions.
Breakout room participants have full audio, video and screen sharing capabilities. The host of the meeting will not be assigned to a breakout room and cannot see or hear what is happening in the breakout rooms during the meeting.
Messages sent in chat from a breakout room are only viewable to those in that breakout room. Main room chat sent while participants are in the breakout rooms does not show in breakout room chat. Anyone in a breakout room can click Ask For Help to request that the Host join the breakout room.
If the host has allowed participants to self-select and join breakout rooms of their choosing, participants will be able to view and select from a list of breakout rooms the host has created.
- Create a new Google Calendar event.
- Click Add Google Meet video conferencing.
- Add participants.
- Click Change conference settings .
- On the left, click Breakout rooms .
- Choose the number of breakout rooms, then choose an option: ...
- Click Save.
How do I manually set a breakout room?
To manually assign participants to breakout rooms, select the Manually radio button and click Create Rooms. The Breakout Rooms dialog box will appear, and we can assign students to a breakout room by clicking Assign to the right of the breakout room's name.
Zoom, like others, is just another virtual platform with the capabilities to host webinars with breakout rooms.
Using the Zoom Android app
When the host has selected the option for participants to choose breakout rooms and opens the rooms the “Breakout Rooms” option will appear. Click on that. You will then be prompted to select a room. Once you have selected press “Join”.
Guests and external users can be assigned to breakout rooms by the organiser. If you select Automatically, you will see the rooms are created and auto- populated by Teams. Select the number of rooms you need (max 50) and either manually assign users to rooms or have teams do it with the automatic setting.
Click the Meeting tab. Under In Meeting (Advanced), click the Breakout room toggle to enable it. If a verification dialog appears, click Enable to verify the change. Note: If the option is grayed out, it has been locked at either the group or account level.
Limitations of Breakout Rooms
By default, only the host or co-host can assign participants to breakout rooms. They can choose to allow participants to choose their own room, but this must be done in the meeting when launching the breakout rooms.