Overview
Microsoft Teams is an easy way to pull together a group to share, collaborate and communicate in one central location without the use of phone calls that take time away from our day or emails that can easily get buried. From directly within Teams we can bring everyone together to share information, securely edit files live and at the same time, bring together Microsoft Office 365 apps (OneDrive, OneNote, Planner, Forms, etc) and third-party apps and websites in one place, tag members of the team in conversations or actions and customize the work through adding notes (OneNote and others) and other applications.
For a more in-depth walk-through with Microsoft Teams, view the Tech Talk video training.
For an in-depth demo of Teams Breakout Rooms (01/08/2021) from the Tech Talk series, click here.
This article will detail the system specifications for organizers and attendees.
System Specifications for Being a Breakout Room Organizer
Before you can create and use breakout rooms, you must:
- Be using the installed the most up-to-date Teams client in Windows or MacOS. Not sure if yours is up-to-date? Here's how to check
- Be using Microsoft Windows 8, 8.1 or 10, or MacOS 10.14, 10.15, or 11.x
- You must have the New Meeting Experience enabled (click here to learn how)
- You must be the owner of the meeting.
- More than one person in your meeting.
- You can prepopulate Breakout Rooms in your meeting by starting it ahead of time, then leaving the meeting. When you start it at its official start time, the rooms will still be there. Note that you must schedule the meeting to prepopulate rooms. Ad-hoc meetings will not save room configurations.
- If you create standing meetings, or virtual office type meetings with static links, you can create rooms to reuse.
- Note that attendees (those who are not meeting organizers) will not see the breakout rooms icon.
System Specifications for Attending a Teams Breakout Room Session
Before you can create and use breakout rooms, you can:
- Use Microsoft Windows 7, 8, 8.1, 10
- Use MacOS 10.12, 10.13, 10.14, 10.15
- Be using the most recent version of the Desktop version of Teams (here's how to check), the installed app on your iOS/Android device, Google Chrome web browser, or Microsoft Edge web browser (note that Apple Safari and Firefox are not supported web browsers). Note: we do strongly suggest that you advise attendees to not attend on a tablet or phone, as there may be limitations place on them by the device or connection that cannot be accounted for.