Meeting Features in Microsoft Teams

1. Breakout Rooms

Creating Breakout Rooms

  1. Open the Breakout panel Click the Breakout rooms icon (two squares) on the top toolbar.

    Starting Breakout Rooms
    Figure 1. Starting Breakout Rooms

  2. Choose room count Select the number of rooms (up to 50).

  3. Assign participants

    • Automatically – Teams distributes participants at random.

    • Manually – Select each person for balanced groups. Click Create rooms.

Managing Breakout Rooms

Assign or Move Participants

  • In the panel, click a room > Assign participants > check names > Assign.

  • Drag-and-drop names for quick moves.

Rename Rooms

Click … on a room tile → Rename (e.g., Sub-Team 1 Room).

Set a Timer

Click the Settings (gear) icon → Set timer → choose 5–120 minutes. Rooms auto-close and return participants when time expires.

Open / Close Rooms

  • Start all: click Start rooms.

  • Close all: click Close rooms (60 sec warning).

  • Individual control: use each room’s … menu.

Broadcast Announcements

Click Make an announcement, type your message, and Send — it appears in every room’s chat.

Returning to the Main Meeting

Participants are pulled back when rooms close. If they click Return, they may rejoin early without ending the session.

2. Accessibility Options

  1. Open the Accessibility Menu

    Accessibility
    Figure 2. Accessibility

  2. In your meeting, click More (…) → Settings → Accessibility.

Sign Language Mode

Here you can enable features for signers and sign language interpreters

Captions

Enable live captions to transcribe the meeting

  1. Captions appear at the bottom in the spoken language.

3. Recording Meeting

  1. Enable recording and Transcription

    Recording and Transcribing
    Figure 3. Recording and Transcribing

  2. In your meeting, click More (…​) → Record and Transcribe

  3. Select the language that will be spoken in your meeting

  4. Record meetings and transcripts for those who are absent and for reviewing discussion

  5. There will be a post in the channel where the meeting was held which will include the recording.

4. Best Practices

  • Announce breakout procedures at the start—clarify how long rooms run and expected deliverables.

  • Monitor accessibility—remind participants to turn on captions if they need them.

  • Share resources in chat—link to OneNote pages or documents for reference during breakout.

  • Record key segments in the main meeting to support later review or accommodate absentees.