M365 Changelog: Breakout rooms: Pre-meeting room creation and participant assignment

MC278891 – Updated September 16, 2021: Microsoft has updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience.

Microsoft is adding the ability for meeting organizers to pre-create rooms ahead of a meeting start and perform participant assignment tasks (both auto and manual) in advance.

This is rolling out on desktop only.

This message is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 81390.

When this will happen:

Rollout will begin mid-October (previously mid-September) and should be complete by late October (previously late September).

How this will affect your organization:

Via this capability, organizers of Channel and Private meetings will be able to perform the following Breakout Rooms configuration tasks before a meeting begins:

• 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

Before a meeting starts, meeting organizers will be able to access a new tab in scheduling form called Breakout rooms that will enable them to pre-create breakout rooms and pre-assign participants.

Breakout Rooms pre-meeting panel

Note:

• During live session, rooms will only be managed via the Breakout Room panel in the meeting itself (organizer or BR manager are required to join the meeting)
• Only invited attendees will be available for assignment, up to 300 participants (At this time, invited channel members will not be available for pre-assignment)

What you need to do to prepare:

You might want to notify your users about this new capability and update your training and documentation as appropriate

Learn more:

• Use breakout rooms in Teams meetings will be updated after launch.