Microsoft has announced a new update for Teams that helps simplify the management and creation of breakout rooms to boost overall efficiency. Some of the new features include being able to reassign participants to ensure the correct people are in breakout rooms when needed, and assignment persistence which ensures the same people are included in subsequent sessions.
With this update, organisers can reassign participants even while a room is ongoing to make sure that the correct people are in the breakout room. This will help to save time as meetings won’t have to be restarted. With persistent assignments, organisers can save time by choosing who participates in what, just once.
When choosing which participants you want to include in a meeting, you’ll notice that the interface has been updated. Explaining the updated interface, Microsoft said:
“When organizers select Assign Participants in the breakout rooms’ right panel, a separate window pops up with a larger view of all the participants and rooms. Organizers can sort by participants or rooms, in addition to selecting multiple participants for room assignments. Imagine speeding up the assignment process by being able to quickly find the right participant(s) or room(s) and multi-assigning by using the checkboxes.”
Other features included in this update allow you to set breakout room timers, add up to 10 breakout room managers, and create breakout rooms and participant assignment tasks ahead of the meeting. Microsoft said the above features are available in Desktop GA with incremental releases coming to government cloud. You can view the Public Roadmap for government timelines.