Microsoft Teams will soon let you set up Breakout Rooms in advance

What you need to know

• Microsoft Teams will soon support pre-creating Breakout Rooms for meetings.
• Organizers will be able to assign participants to specific Breakout Rooms in advance.
• The new options should finish rolling out by the end of September 2021.

Microsoft Teams will soon gain new options for setting up Breakout Rooms. The communication client will let organizers pre-create rooms before meetings, including assigning people to rooms in advance. The new options should start rolling out in September 2021 and be available to everyone by the end of September 2021.

A LinkedIn post (opens in new tab) by Rene Vlieger discusses the new capabilities. According to his LinkedIn profile, Vlieger works at Centric and is a consultant of Microsoft 365 digital strategy.

The post outlines the following new options:

• Bulk creating / deleting rooms
• Adding / deleting / renaming individual rooms
• Configuring meeting options for each room
• Adjusting settings for breakout rooms session (timer, selecting breakout rooms managers and more)
• Pre-assigning participants via both manual and automatic assignment options

The new options will appear within a new tab in the scheduling section labeled "Breakout Rooms." Once a meeting begins, people will have to manage Breakout Rooms within the meeting.

In addition to these new features, Microsoft is adding new presenter options to Breakout Rooms. The new option allows additional people to present within Breakout Rooms.