Windows 10: Breakout rooms available today in Microsoft Teams

Brink · Dec 9, 2020

Creating meaningful connection can be difficult in larger group settings. Breakout rooms allow organizers to divide the meeting into sub-groups to facilitate discussions and brainstorming sessions.

We are excited to announce that breakout rooms will be available today in Microsoft Teams (available in GCC this week).

The meeting organizer can create up to 50 breakout rooms and choose to automatically or manually assign participants into rooms. The organizer can start a breakout room in a Teams meeting or a Teams channel meeting, allowing greater flexibility on how you want to meet.

Using the breakout room settings, the meeting organizer can choose to allow participants to come back to the main meeting at any time, then return to the assigned breakout room. This way participants can ask a clarifying question without disturbing the breakout room discussions.

Also, organizers can use the setting to re-create breakout rooms in the same meeting. This allows them to assign participants into new room setups.

The meeting organizer can create, rename, and delete rooms as needed.

Once the breakout rooms are open, meeting organizers can join any of the breakout sessions. And should the need arise, you can quickly switch attendees in between breakout rooms.

Organizers can send announcements to the breakout rooms, and recall all participants back to the main meeting at any time.

Since breakout rooms are Teams meetings, all the innovation that makes Teams meetings inclusive, interactive, and intelligent are available within. Attendees can discuss a topic in their breakout room while in a virtual coffee shop in Together mode. Or students can bring up the Microsoft Whiteboard and draw out their ideas. This is also true of our security features that help make your Teams meetings a safe and secure place to meet.

Any files from the breakout rooms can be shared in the main meeting once everyone is back together and will be available afterwards in the meeting chat.

FAQ

Who can start a breakout room?

Only the meeting organizer can start breakout rooms.

How can I use breakout rooms?

The meeting organizer can start a breakout room on the desktop client only.

Participants can join a breakout room from desktop, web or mobile. Microsoft Teams Rooms do not have breakout room capabilities yet.

Participants logged in from multiple devices will have all end points join the same breakout room.

How do I make sure I can start using breakout rooms?

Make sure that the new meeting experience is enabled (Teams -> Settings -> General -> Check âTurn on new meeting experienceâ&#157

Check and make sure you have the latest Teams updates (Update Microsoft Teams - Office Support)

IT admins can check how often their tenants get updates, which may impact when their users receive new features like breakout rooms (Set up the Standard or Targeted release options - Microsoft 365 admin | Microsoft Docs)

Iâm an educator, what will my students be able to do?

Since breakout rooms are Teams meetings, the same security policies and options apply.

Educators will have the option to push students into the breakout rooms and pull them back to the main meeting, without any additional action needed by the student.

Students can be assigned to breakout rooms, join breakout rooms, use the whiteboard or screen share if allowed to in normal school meetings, re-join the main meeting, and see their breakout room chat.

Students cannot add participants, will not see suggestions of students who should join, cannot get meeting details or dial out, will not see the files or chats from other breakout rooms, and cannot rejoin the original meeting themselves.

Learn more about using breakout rooms at your school or university here.

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Source: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/...s/ba-p/1968481

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Brink · Dec 9, 2020

Microsoft Teams for Education 20 updates, 7x7 video and Breakout Rooms

Over the last few months, schools and institutions have been working tirelessly to enable distance learning. We’ve heard directly from many of you about engaging students in lessons, encouraging student-to-student collaboration, and facilitating staff professional development, all while remote.

Thank you for sharing your thoughts and ideas about how to improve Microsoft Teams for distance and hybrid learning. We continue to be inspired by you and are always exploring and implementing new ways for Teams to support student engagement and professional development.

We pulled together key learnings we’ve heard from customers, and announced new features designed to support you and your class. If you’d like to read more, check out the Remote Learning Trends blog here. Or read on to learn the specifics of what’s available and coming soon, and how students, educators, and IT can get the most of out Teams.

Getting back-to-school ready with 4 top-requested features

What is available now, what’s coming soon

Resources for educators

Guidance for IT admins

Getting back-to-school ready with 4 top-requested features

Just like in a physical classroom, students and educators will see up to 49 attendees in a 7x7 class meeting view, preview available at the end of June.

7x7 video view showing 49 screens

Coming in the Fall, instead of trying to work with the whole class, educators can create virtual breakout rooms so students can work within their smaller groups on a discussion or assignment, then easily be called back to the larger group.

To help educators focus on students and give informed feedback, the Class Insights tab, now available, uses intelligent data analytics to highlight how students are learning and engaging in meetings, communication, files and assignment activities. And in time for the fall, educators will see a new, tailored view that distills the key story and trends behind the data to better inform engagement with students and class outcomes.

New Class Insights dashboard

Eliminate background distractions and create a more focused online learning environment with a . This means you can upload any image you want as your background. And later in June, get ready for some fun new education themed backgrounds.

Use a custom background for your video

What's available now, what’s coming soon

We have been listening closely to educators and have already integrated your feedback into our product plans. Here are the features we have just shipped, as well as a bunch more that are coming soon. We have many more being active worked on in UserVoice for Teams and education that you can get the latest status on. Just look for the "Working on it" status in UserVoice items

Enriched classroom meeting experience – available now

Easily Change “Meeting Options” in the Participant Panel

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBJ3hQx0-GE

https://youtu.be/_jj0XgB-P84

Enriched classroom meeting experience – coming soon

7x7 video support on desktop (see 49 people at once) –Preview starting in late June, coming this fall

Only Educators can start the meeting - Students must wait in the lobby – Coming this summer

Breakout Rooms – Coming this fall

Meetings attendee limit increasing from 250 to 300 – Rolling out in June

IT Admin meeting settings and policies

New IT Admin policy packages for remote learning and other education personas - Rolled out

Setting for the default role of meeting attendee - a policy setting to allow the default for meetings to be Educator is “organizer” and students are “attendees” – Rolled out

Do not let students join meetings unattended based on meeting creation policies – Coming this summer

Supporting educators and students with new classroom features

Class Materials available on Android – Coming in July

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ax3HQ4NYjc - Rolled out

Assign a OneNote page into a nested Section Group – Rolled out

Minecraft Share to Teams for Assignments – Coming in June

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZOD7IyQucE – Available now with new experience coming for fall

New integrations with top EdTech partners

Kahoot! is now available as an app in Teams – Rolled out now

Prezi is now available as an app in Teams – Rolled out now

Grade Sync comes to Infinite Campus Student Information System (SIS), and in the fall all OneRoster compatible SISs

Resources for educators

A how-to video or short webinar are convenient ways to learn directly from trusted experts. Below are a few that we recommend to help you quickly ramp up on Teams meetings.

Getting Started with

Teams for Education Quick Start Guide (PDF) overview that includes meetings and calls

Teams for Education Quick Start Guide for Students (PDF)

Teams for Education Quick Start Guide for Educators (PDF)

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLiluTszfwwMI9N-ZNqxlsqiSJ7yYQL8fu

Teams for Education video playlist

We’ve put together a few playlists to let educators quickly learn more about Microsoft Teams for Education. You can access our entire https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLiluTszfwwMKicAo6agloFALEB5WvYNYs for more training, as well as this https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLdHjJccRYryNlNxlFJO7XiHVdr8ah5c_7 from Microsoft Education Product Manager Mike Tholfsen. Bookmark both so you can reference at any time.

These playlists are designed for you to quickly master tips for teaching in Teams. Below is a great Assignments video from our Teams EDU playlist with the #eTwinz, Alberto and Mario Herraez!

Webinar - Teams meetings for the classroom – what to use now, and what is coming soon

Gordon Chang from our product group demonstrates Teams meetings and discusses the future roadmap in this https://youtu.be/W-La0cigkqg (you can also review the https://www.youtube.com/redirect?q=...Tk4MzYz&event=video_description&v=W-La0cigkqg).

IT admin guidance

We want you to be aware of and familiar with the different policy settings for Teams as you deploy. Here are two essential articles that all IT Admins should reference to get the most out of Teams meetings.

IT Admin guidance for setting up meetings

Explore the new IT Admin policy packages for remote learning and other education personas

Manage meetings policies in Teams

As we work to improve the Teams meetings experience for instruction, our top commitment is reliable service delivery to each school and university using Teams. We are also prioritizing features that ensure student safety by making it easier for educators to manage their online classes in Teams meetings.

Thank you again for making time to share your remote learning experiences with us! It is through your feedback that we can build a more useful education tool. Please continue to share your feedback and ideas through UserVoice and feel free to track all of these features on the public roadmap. We’ll continue to share updates on what we’re working on and what you can expect in the weeks to come.

Mike Tholfsen
Microsoft Education Product Manager
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Source: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/...o/ba-p/1457748

Brink · Dec 9, 2020

Microsoft Teams Rooms update 4.0.76.0 going live today

Microsoft Teams Rooms update 4.0.76.0 is scheduled to go live today. As with previous releases, we'll start off by making the update available to 10% of devices and then throttle up to 100% in the next few days.

This update includes a couple of notable fixes. First, we're removing the casting icon and description on the Front-of-Room display when the device's Bluetooth beacon is not enabled. (Side note: the Bring Your Own Meeting user experience affiliated with the casting icon will be enabled for users some time in the next couple months. Thank you for your patience!) Second, we've fixed a volume issue that occurs on MTR in Teams meeting mode.
Click to expand...

Source: Microsoft Teams Rooms update 4.0.76.0 going live today - Microsoft Tech Community - 360146

Brink · Dec 9, 2020

Microsoft Teams Rooms update 4.0.76.0 going live today

Microsoft Teams Rooms update 4.0.76.0 is scheduled to go live today. As with previous releases, we'll start off by making the update available to 10% of devices and then throttle up to 100% in the next few days.

This update includes a couple of notable fixes. First, we're removing the casting icon and description on the Front-of-Room display when the device's Bluetooth beacon is not enabled. (Side note: the Bring Your Own Meeting user experience affiliated with the casting icon will be enabled for users some time in the next couple months. Thank you for your patience!) Second, we've fixed a volume issue that occurs on MTR in Teams meeting mode.
Click to expand...

Source: Microsoft Teams Rooms update 4.0.76.0 going live today - Microsoft Tech Community - 360146

Windows 10: Breakout rooms available today in Microsoft Teams

Breakout rooms available today in Microsoft Teams

Breakout rooms available today in Microsoft Teams

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