Using breakout rooms in teams for personal account

Question

I cant find the breakout room feature in my teams and need to create and manage it for an upcoming meeting. Do I need to upgrade to Business version?

Answer 1

Hi @Deepa George

Thank you for reaching out to the Microsoft Q&A Forum. 

I can certainly clarify why you're not seeing the breakout room feature. The ability to create and manage breakout rooms is not available in the personal version of Microsoft Teams (often called Microsoft Teams Free). This feature is exclusive to the paid Microsoft 365 or Office 365 plans that include Teams.

To be able to create and manage breakout rooms for your upcoming meeting, you would need to upgrade to a business subscription.   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. 

Please refer to the following article to create breakout rooms after you have subscribed > https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/manage-breakout-rooms-in-microsoft-teams-7de1f48a-da07-466c-a5ab-4ebace28e461#bkmk_appointpresenters

I hope this information can help you to solve your issue soon. If the issue persists, please feel free to send me more information.

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Answer 2

No its not yet resolved as I am unable to use my preferred email address with the Teams Essential program and even after 'chatting' with 4-5 different people from Sales & Support of both Personal & Business, they now inform me I cannot migrate my calendar so my purchase seems redundant.

Answer 3

Hello,

Breakroom is indeed a business feature and you need at least Microsoft 365 Basic to see it, Teams Essential doesn't have it either. You can see the feature breakdown if you scroll down here on this page: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-teams/compare-microsoft-teams-business-options?activetab=pivot:primaryr1

And no, you cannot use your personal account on any of the business plans. Microsoft's home and business products are two completely separate ecosystems using different and separate accounts, they cannot be mingled.