Why can't I activate the breakout rooms icon?

Dear @Susan SA,

Thank you for posting your question in the Microsoft Q&A forum.

To see Breakout rooms in your meeting controls, you must be a meeting organizer of a scheduled private meeting, a Meet Now meeting, a scheduled channel meeting, or a channel Meet Now meeting. Additionally, you need to join the meeting from a supported Teams client for Windows or macOS. 

Linux, web, iOS, iPadOS, Android (including Chromebook), PSTN, and VDI clients are currently enabled only for breakout room attendees, which means participants joining from these clients can be moved to breakout rooms but cannot manage breakout rooms. 

For more information about this, please follow the Microsoft Official Guide here: Breakout rooms troubleshooting guide in Microsoft Teams

You will not see Breakout rooms  in your meeting controls if: 

• You are not a meeting organizer, or you were not set as a breakout room manager.
• The meeting was canceled.
• The thread where the channel meeting was organized was deleted.
• The meeting was organized in a private or a shared channel.
• You joined from an unsupported client.
• You are not from the same organization as the meeting organizer.
• Breakout rooms are disabled by a policy through your admin portal.

Firstly, I recommend you try these steps below again for better troubleshooting:

Solution 1: Create breakout rooms

To create breakout rooms, you must be a meeting organizer or a presenter in the meeting organizer's organization who's been appointed a breakout rooms manager.

Option 1: Before a meeting

• Select Calendar in Teams.
• Double-click a meeting to expand its details.
• Select Breakout rooms > Create rooms.
• Choose the number of rooms you want (up to 50).
• Select Add rooms.
• Select Assign participants .
• Choose how you want participants to be assigned.
• Select Next > Save.

If you create breakout rooms before a meeting starts, you can invite up to 300 people. As soon as the meeting starts, you can open the breakout rooms.

Option 2: During a meeting

• Select Rooms in the meeting controls.
• Choose the number of rooms you want to create (up to 50).
• Choose how you want participants to be assigned.
• Select Create rooms

To add another breakout room during the meeting, select Rooms   > Add room in the meeting controls.

Note: You won't be able to automatically assign people to breakout rooms later in the meeting.

For more information and instruction about this feature, please follow the Microsoft Official Guide here: Manage breakout rooms in Microsoft Teams

Solution 2: Enable Breakout Rooms option in the audio & video meeting policies (via PowerShell-only) - If you are user, please ask your IT admin to do.

If the Breakout rooms are disabled, you can enable it using Microsoft Teams PowerShell module: For reference: Audio & video - Teams Setting Policies

For example:

# Connect to Teams
Connect-MicrosoftTeams

# Check current policy
Get-CsTeamsMeetingPolicy | Select AllowBreakoutRooms

# Enable Breakout Rooms in a specific policy
Set-CsTeamsMeetingPolicy -Identity "Global" -AllowBreakoutRooms $true

Notes:

• Replace "Global" with the policy name if you’re modifying a custom policy.
• After changes, allow up to 24 hours for propagation.

I hope this information is helpful. Please follow these steps and let me know if it works for you. If not, we can work together to resolve this.

Please understand that our initial response does not always resolve the issue immediately. However, with your help and more detailed information, we can work together to find a solution.

Thank you for your patience and your understanding. If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out.

I'm looking forward for your reply.

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