Create Breakout Rooms in Microsoft Teams During a Meeting

If you’ve ever been in a large Teams meeting where you need to split people into smaller groups — for a workshop, training session, or brainstorming activity — breakout rooms are exactly what you need.

In this tutorial, I’ll walk you through everything: how to set up breakout rooms before a meeting, how to create them on the fly during a live call, how to manage participants, and a few tips to keep the whole thing running smoothly.

Let’s get into it.

What Are Breakout Rooms in Teams?

Breakout rooms in Microsoft Teams are smaller, separate meeting spaces that you can spin up inside a larger meeting. Think of it like this — you’re in a conference room with 40 people, and you need to split everyone into groups of 5 to work on different topics. Instead of creating separate meetings, you just open breakout rooms directly from within your main meeting.

Each room has its own chat, audio, and video. People can talk without the rest of the main meeting hearing them. Once you’re done, everyone comes back together in the main meeting.

You can create up to 50 breakout rooms per meeting and assign up to 300 participants across them.

Create Breakout Rooms in Microsoft Teams During a Meeting

Before jumping in, here’s what you need to be aware of:

• Only the meeting organizer (or a presenter who’s been assigned as a breakout room manager) can create and manage breakout rooms.
• Breakout rooms work best on the Teams desktop app (Windows or Mac). The web app and mobile have limited support for managing rooms, though participants can join rooms from any version of Teams.
• You can set up breakout rooms before the meeting starts or during the meeting itself. Both methods work, and I’ll cover both below.

Method 1: Create Breakout Rooms Before the Meeting

This is my preferred approach. Setting up rooms in advance gives you time to name them properly, assign people, and configure settings without feeling rushed while everyone’s waiting on a live call.

Here’s how to do it:

1. Open Microsoft Teams and go to your Calendar.
2. Double-click on the meeting you’ve scheduled to open its details.
3. At the top of the meeting details panel, click on Breakout Rooms.

4. Click Create Rooms.

5. From the dropdown, select how many rooms you want to create (you can add up to 50).
6. Click Add Rooms.

7. Now click Assign Participants to decide who goes into which room.

8. Choose between Automatic (Teams assigns people randomly) or Manual (you pick who goes where).

9. Click Next, then Save.

That’s it. When the meeting starts, all your rooms are already set up and ready to go. You just click Open Rooms, and everyone gets sent to their assigned group.

Pro tip: If you want to rename your rooms to something meaningful — like “Group A: Product Strategy” or “Workshop Room 1” — you can do that here too. Just click the three dots next to a room name and select Rename. This helps participants know exactly what they’re joining.

Method 2: Create Breakout Rooms During a Live Meeting

Sometimes you don’t plan ahead, or you decide mid-meeting that you need to split into groups. That’s totally fine — you can create rooms on the spot.

Here’s how:

1. Join your Teams meeting as the organizer.
2. In the meeting controls toolbar at the top of your screen, look for the Rooms icon (it looks like a small square inside a larger square).

3. Click it to open the Breakout Rooms panel.

4. Choose the number of rooms you want from the dropdown.
5. Select how you want to assign participants — Automatically or Manually.

6. Click Create Rooms.

The rooms are created instantly. Now you can either open them all at once or open them one at a time.

To open all rooms at once, click Open Rooms at the bottom of the panel.

To open rooms individually, click the three dots next to a specific room and select Open Room.

When you open the rooms, participants get a notification on their screen and are either moved automatically or prompted to join their room — depending on your settings.

How to Assign and Move Participants

One of the most common questions I get is: “What if I want to move someone to a different room after the meeting has started?”

You absolutely can. Here’s how:

1. In the Rooms panel, click Assign Participants.
2. You’ll see a list of all participants.
3. Next to each person’s name, there’s a dropdown — just select the room you want to assign them to.
4. Click Save.

If you want to shuffle everyone around randomly (useful for networking events or ice-breaker activities), click Assign Participants and then select Shuffle. You can choose to shuffle everyone or only participants who haven’t been assigned yet.

Adding a New Room Mid-Meeting

Need to add another room after you’ve already started? Easy:

• In the meeting controls, click Rooms → Add Room.

A new room appears at the bottom of the list, and you can assign people to it right away.

Set a Time Limit for Breakout Rooms

If you’re running a structured workshop or a class, you probably want rooms to close automatically after a set time. Teams has a built-in timer feature for this.

Here’s how to set it up:

1. Open the Rooms panel.
2. Click the Settings (gear) icon.
3. Toggle on Set a time limit.
4. Choose your desired duration.

When the timer expires, rooms automatically close and everyone is brought back into the main meeting. Participants see a countdown on their screen so they know when time is running out — no need for you to manually chase everyone.

Note: If you want people to have the option to stay or leave on their own after the timer ends (instead of being auto-moved back), turn off the Automatically move people to rooms toggle in your settings.

Send Announcements to All Breakout Rooms

As the organizer, you can send a text announcement to all breakout rooms at the same time — without having to enter each room individually. This is great for giving instructions, sharing updates, or warning people that time is almost up.

Here’s how:

1. In the Rooms panel, click Make an announcement.

2. Type your message.
3. Click Send.

Everyone in every room will see your message appear in their meeting chat. Simple and effective.

Joining and Visiting Breakout Rooms

As the organizer, you’re not stuck in the main meeting. You can pop into any room to check in, answer questions, or just listen.

To join a breakout room:

• In the Rooms panel, click the three dots next to any room.
• Select Join Room.

You’ll be moved into that room. To go back to the main meeting or jump to another room, just use the same panel.

Participant Self-Selection (New Feature as of 2025)

This is a feature that was rolled out widely in early 2025, and it’s a game-changer for certain meeting types.

If you enable participant self-selection, attendees can see a list of open breakout rooms and choose which one to join themselves — and switch between rooms as they please. This works really well for:

• Open-space style workshops
• Networking events
• Unconferences or “choose your own discussion” formats

To enable it, go to your Breakout Room Settings and toggle on Participants can choose rooms.

Once enabled, participants will see a list of available rooms and can move between them freely.

Closing Breakout Rooms and Wrapping Up

When you’re ready to bring everyone back:

• Click Close Rooms in the Rooms panel.

All participants receive a notification and are automatically moved back to the main meeting (if the auto-move setting is on) or prompted to return on their own.

After everyone’s back, you can continue the main meeting, do a debrief, or wrap up — whatever your agenda calls for.

Tips for Running Smooth Breakout Sessions

Here are a few things I’ve learned from running breakout rooms regularly:

• Always name your rooms clearly. “Room 1” tells people nothing. “Marketing Campaign Ideas” or “Q3 Budget Review” gives context immediately.
• Assign a facilitator to each room. You can promote a participant to a co-organizer or presenter role so they can manage the conversation in their room.
• Brief participants before opening rooms. Tell people what they should discuss, how long they have, and what output you expect. Don’t just open rooms and leave people wondering what to do.
• Use the time limit feature. It keeps sessions focused and avoids the awkward “okay, everyone come back now” moment.
• Send a reminder announcement 2 minutes before closing. Helps people wrap up their conversations naturally.
• Test it before your big meeting. Run a quick test call with a colleague to make sure everything works the way you expect.

Quick Recap

Here’s a quick summary of what you can do with breakout rooms in Teams:

Feature	Available
Create rooms before a meeting	✅ Yes
Create rooms during a meeting	✅ Yes
Max number of rooms	50
Max participants	300
Assign participants automatically	✅ Yes
Assign participants manually	✅ Yes
Shuffle participants	✅ Yes
Set a timer for auto-close	✅ Yes
Send announcements to all rooms	✅ Yes
Participant self-selection	✅ Yes (2025+)
Join any room as an organizer	✅ Yes

Also, you may like some more Teams tutorials:

• Hide Chat Panel in Microsoft Teams
• Delete Chats in Microsoft Teams
• Disable Microsoft Teams

Common Issues and Questions

Microsoft Teams breakout rooms are one of those features that sound simple but can genuinely transform how you run meetings once you get the hang of them. Whether you’re a trainer, a team lead, or a teacher running a class, the ability to split into smaller groups and come back together makes collaboration much more focused and effective.