Microsoft Teams will let meeting organizers set a timer for Virtual Breakout rooms

Microsoft Teams introduced a new Virtual Breakout rooms feature on the desktop last year along with other improvements such as Together mode scenes, custom backgrounds, and more. Now, the company is working on a new set of admin options for managing Breakout rooms in the app.

According to the Microsoft 365 roadmap, Microsoft Teams is adding a timer option in the Breakout Room settings. It will allow the meeting organizers to set the time limit for each room. When the timer duration expires, the breakout room will close automatically, and all the participants will return to the main meeting.

In addition to this, the app is adding room assignment retention settings to retain room configuration and assignment over various brainstorming sessions. Microsoft is also bringing the ability for organizers to move participants across rooms & main meeting when Breakout rooms are open.

Lastly, a new bypass lobby option is coming to Teams meetings. This setting will make it mandatory for all attendees to bypass the meeting lobby rather than directly jumping into the ongoing meeting. However, It will be up to the meeting hosts to apply this meeting policy to people in their organization and exclude external guest users.

The Microsoft 365 roadmap indicates that these updates will start gradually rolling out to users later this month. In case you missed it, other improvements being planned for Teams this year include the ability to pause video recordings, an Out of Office message scheduling option, and a Walkie Talkie feature for iOS.