How to Set Up and Run Virtual Breakout Rooms in Microsoft Teams (An End to End Guide)

"It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed." - Theodore Roosevelt

About Microsoft Teams - Microsoft Teams is a unified real-time communication and collaboration platform. It combines chat, video meetings, file storage (allowing collaboration on files), and application integration to help your team stay organized and have conversations — all that in one place. So, your team conversations, files, meetings, and apps live together in a single and shared workspace, and you access it on your favorite mobile device. In addition, Microsoft Teams can integrate with non-Microsoft products.

Let me walk you through "how to run breakout sessions using Microsoft teams". So, let us get started by opening the Team’s application. 

Section A: Create Teams and Channels in Microsoft Teams

Step 1: Create your team in Microsoft Teams by following the steps mentioned in the article Create a team from scratch. For the purpose of this hands-on guide, let us name the team as “Pi Planning”

Tip: You may also refer to the Microsoft Teams document: Create your first teams and channels in Microsoft Teams

Step 2: Follow the steps in the article Create a channel in Teams. For the purpose of this hands-on guide, I created the following channels: “Team A”, “Team B”, “Team C”, “Team D”, “Team E”, “Team F” (see Figure 2.1)

Figure 2.1: Creating a Team and multiple channels 

Section B: Setting Up Meetings in Microsoft Teams

Step 3 – Setting up meeting invites in Pi Planning Team using Channel meetings.

I have created a Team called Pi Planning, and as you can see (in Figure 2.1), also six channels. This is because I have 6 teams (A, B, C, D, E, F), whereby each will occupy a channel during their breakout session in the virtual PI Planning. All channels can be selected for scheduled meetings with everyone involved. All members of the channel can participate in the meeting, which is an easy way to make sure that everyone is on the same page. Let us use the General channel as the one place where everyone from all six teams can participate and chat (In SAFe, think of this as the Agile Release Train’s channel).

3.1    Create a meeting in a channel - Make it a General channel meeting - If you need to hold an open meeting, create a meeting in a General channel. In PI Planning, think of this as the whole train’s meeting. Select Calendar > + New meeting as shown in Figure 3.1.

Figure 3.1: Creating a New meeting

3.2  Under Select a channel to meet in, select the arrow and choose a channel as shown in Figure 3.2.

Figure 3.2: Creating a meeting for all teams participating in PI Planning (General)

3.3    Once you click on General channel from the dropdown list, the selected channel appears on the channel field as shown below in Figure 3.3.

Figure 3.3: Creating a Pi Planning meeting

3.4   Add any further details relevant to your meeting and click on the Send button located at the top right corner of the window. Now the meeting is visible to everyone in the team in General channel as shown in Figure 3.4.

Figure 3.4: General Pi Planning meeting invite

Tip 3.1: Type the name of one or more channels where it says Add channel. You can add as many channels as you want into the Channel list. If you want this PI Planning train meeting invite to appear in all teams’ channels, then add each team’s channel name here to the meeting invite.

Tip 3.2: If it is a recurring meeting, open the dropdown menu next to Does not repeat (just below the date). Choose how often you want it to occur from the default options or select Custom to create your own cadence.

Step 4 - Create a meeting in Team A channel (make it an open meeting for Team A). Think of this as a breakout meeting where all people in Team A can communicate and collaborate using this Team A channel meeting. Also, anyone from other teams can join this Team A meeting if they have dependencies and need to collaborate.

Note: When you have a meeting in a channel, everyone in the team will be able to see it and join it in that channel.

4.1  Select Meetings > + New meeting as shown in Figure 4.1

Figure 4.1: Creating a New meeting

4.2  Under Select a channel to meet in, select the arrow and choose a channel as shown in Figure 4.2

Figure 4.2: Creating a meeting for break-out Team A

4.3  Once you click on Team A channel from the dropdown list, the selected channel appears on the channel field as shown in Figure 4.3.

 Figure 4.3: Creating a break-out meeting for team A which participates in Pi Planning

4.4  Copy and paste the channel info in Location. Add a description and click on the Send button located at the top right corner of the window as shown in Figure 4.4 

Figure 4.4: Scheduling a break-out team meeting for team A

Now the meeting is visible to everyone in the team in General channel as shown in Figure 4.5.

 Figure 4.5: Virtual meeting room for team A is created and visible to everyone

Tip 4.1: Type the name of one or more channels where it says Add channel. You can add as many channels you want into the Channel list. If you want this Team A meeting invite to appear in all teams’ channels, then add each team’s channel name here to the meeting invite.

Tip 4.2: If it is a recurring meeting, open the dropdown menu next to Does not repeat (just below the date). Choose how often you want it to occur from the default options or select Custom to create your own cadence.

Repeat Step 4 to create meetings in Team B Channel, Team C Channel, Team D Channel, Team E Channel, Team F Channel 

Alternative to Step3: Step 5: In case your computer does not show the Calendar menu tab in Microsoft teams, use this step 5 to schedule meetings in Team’s channels.

5.1  Find your Microsoft teams channel email address - Every Channel that you create within Teams not only creates a folder within the Team document library on SharePoint, it also creates an email address. End users can send a message to the Channel email address and it will automatically be added as a conversation thread within Teams. Unfortunately, Teams automatically generates the email address and it cannot be changed. To find out what your channel email address is follow these steps:

Open your Teams app and navigate to the Pi Planning Team and navigate to General Channel. Click the drop down to expand the channels if necessary. Click the ellipsis next to the Channel, then on Get email address as shown in Figure 5.1.

Figure 5.1: Get email address of General channel

5.2  Click copy (see Figure 5.2) and then save it somewhere you can easily access, such as in your contacts.

Tip: By clicking on advanced settings you can change who can email to the Channel address.

Figure 5.2: Copying email address of the created channel

5.3  Schedule a meeting in Outlook (see Figure 5.3). From the Inbox, select New Items > Meeting. In the Required field, enter the email address of the channel you copied in previous step 5.2.

Figure 5.3: Scheduling Teams meeting from outlook

Step 6: Once you have completed setting up meetings for all the Teams’ channels, here is how the calendar looks like in teams (see Figure 6.1) and in outlook (Figure 6.2)

Figure 6.1: Pi Planning meeting with Teams’ break-out meetings in Teams

Figure 6.2: Pi Planning meeting with the teams’ individual break-out meetings in Outlook

Section C: Joining Main Meeting and Breakout Rooms

Step 7: Starting the virtually facilitated interactive sessions for the whole train 

Now that the setup is complete, start the General – Pi Planning meeting where the whole train (all the 6 teams) join the meeting. Anyone who is a member of this team can join the meeting. There are multiple ways in which one can join the meeting. I am showing one way of joining the meeting here.

7.1  Go to General Channel and Click on Join Microsoft Teams Meeting (as shown in Figure 7.1).

 Figure 7.1: Joining a Microsoft Team Meeting in Pi Planning

7.2  Click on Join Now (see Figure 7.2)

 Figure 7.2: Joining a Microsoft Team Meeting

Step 8: Joining Team A breakout session

Please note that you are already in General Channel meeting (the whole Agile Release Train’s meeting with 6 teams in this case), and if you need to attend Team A break out session, there are multiple ways one can join that meeting. I am showing here one way to join the meeting. Do not “hang up” your main General Channel meeting call to join a Team A Breakout Room – rather, simply join the meeting in the channel and it will put your main call on hold.

8.1  Go to Team A Channel and Click on Join Microsoft Teams Meeting (as shown in Figure 8.1).

Figure 8.1: Joining a Microsoft Team Meeting in Team A - Room

8.2  Click on Join Now (see Figure 8.2) 

Figure 8.2: Joining the Microsoft Team Meeting

Here you can see there's another session under the “meeting running” which is the main General channel session. I can go back to that at any point and leave this Team A breakout session. You can see we now have two meetings running in parallel.

Note: You may observe, as soon as you join Team A meeting, the General Pi Planning meeting goes to hold. This is on hold only for you and not for other people on the General Channel meeting. So, you don’t have to “hang up” your main meeting call to join a Breakout Room in Team A channel – rather simply join the Meet Now in the channel and it will put your main call on hold.

Step 9: Joining Team B, Team C, etc. breakout session

I am going to join the Team B breakout group like I joined the Team A break out session. Let's click on that channel, let's click to join now, and you are connected (see Figure 9.1 and Figure 9.2). Follow similar steps to 8.1 and 8.2 to join Team C, Team D, or any other team Channel breakout session.

Figure 9.1: joining Team B breakout session while being connected already to General - Pi Planning and Team A - Room

Figure 9.2: joining Team C breakout session

Please note that there is a limit of 4 concurrent meetings per user. So, you can be in a meeting and still have up to three calls on hold at once and circle back through any of them by clicking the “resume” button for the appropriate call in the top left of Teams. Being in Team C breakout group, you can see I have the option to toggle between the other meetings that are running at the same time. So, Team A - Room, Team B - Room and Team C – Room are the break-out session meeting rooms respectively for Team A, Team B, and Team C, and General -Pi Planning is the main session where all teams want to go back (Figure 9.3). While still in team C- Room, the other virtual meeting rooms are running in the background.

To place participants in their rooms, press the play button depicted in the top left of Figure 9.2. As part of the preparation, first make sure that "each participant knows exactly in which breakout group they're going to be" so that they can verify that they are in the right group, once placed. Then, guide them to that channel: So, if you're in team A, I would guide you to the Teams icon in the top left-hand corner of the screen and ask you to find underneath the Pi Planning the channel that says Team A. If you click on that you can see that you're facilitating the meeting so your participants can just click join and they will automatically be sent into their Team A breakout group. We can join them too, so let's do that; let's click join, and we found ourselves here in Team A's breakout group. 

Figure 9.3: Toggled from Team C – Room to Pi-Planning Room

Step 10: Getting everyone back to the Main meeting room from their individual breakout sessions

Section D: Getting everyone back to the Main Meeting from Breakout Rooms

How do we send a message to everyone to come back to the Pi Planning room (General Channel) or to the main meeting?

In Microsoft Teams, we can send out an announcement. Announcements look sharp and will catch your users’ attention – especially if you mark it “important”! Also, we can tag people. The fun part is that we can post in multiple channels. We then hit send and it appears in all channels. It is so easy

10.1  Begin by selecting the “Format” icon under the text input box (see Figure 10.1):

10.2 In the upper left corner of the text input box, it will say New conversation, this is for a normal post. If you click it, a menu will open, and you will see the two choices: New conversation and Announcement (see Figure 10.2)

Figure 10.2: Creating a new Announcement

10.3 Here (in Figure 10.3) are all the steps to perform an announcement 

Figure 10.3: Steps to create an Announcement

10.4 Type a headline, subhead, announcement message. You can change the background color of the headline area or upload an image. You can also format the messages as usual with e.g. stickers, formatted text, and links to decorate your post. The announcements will have an icon showing that it is an announcement in the right corner. Format as desired and select the background color or image on the right side of the screen (see Figure 10.4).

Figure 10.4: created Announcement

10.5 You can send your announcement to all breakout rooms or channels. Click on Select channels and select all the channels where you want to send out the announcements to as shown in Figure 10.5.

Figure 10.5: Select the channels you want to send your announcement to

10.6  Then click on update to post your announcement to all the breakout rooms/channels. When you finish creating a new announcement, a new post will also appear in the Conversation tab of all the channels you selected (see Figure 10.6)

Figure 10.6: Announcement is posted in the channel chat

Tip: Mark a message as important - If you want to make sure the class pays attention to your post in a channel or chat, the best thing to do is mark it as important. To do that, enter the expanded compose box by selecting the Format ( ) and then select the Important! icon. That will add a red exclamation point next to your message and the word IMPORTANT.

Step 11: Team Collaboration via virtual white board

Section E: Realtime Whiteboard in Microsoft Teams

Microsoft Whiteboard is a free-form, digital canvas where people, content, and ideas come together. Whiteboard integration in Microsoft Teams meetings is powered by the Whiteboard web app, which lets Teams meeting participants draw, sketch, and write together on a shared digital canvas. You can share a whiteboard to make it available to all participants in a Teams meeting.

11.1 After joining a Teams meeting, click the Share icon in the share tray of that meeting (see Figure 11.1)

Figure 11.1: Selecting the Share option

11.2 In the Whiteboard section, select Microsoft Whiteboard on the right side of the screen as shown in Figure 11.2.

Figure 11.2: Select the Microsoft Whiteboard option

A soon as the Whiteboard canvas has started, the Teams meeting attendees will be able to use it. To begin, click the Pen icon, select a color, and then begin to draw, sketch, or write on the board (Figure 11.3)

Figure 11.3: writing, sketching, or drawing on the white board

Step 12: Additional Team collaboration tools

Section F: Adding web collaboration tools like Miro, Mural, etc. in Microsoft Teams

12.1 In Microsoft Teams, select a team, and a channel under that team. In this example, it's the General channel under the Pi Planning.

12.2  Choose + to add a tab (see Figure 12.2)

Figure 12.2: Selecting the +

12.3 In the Add a tab, select Miro or Mural and continue with the setup as shown in Figure 12.3

Figure 12.3: Select Miro or Mural

If you have additional ideas on how you’d use Breakout Rooms in Teams, then please add them to the comments below.