Create a Team | Schedule a meeting | Assign roles | Breakout rooms

Create a Team

• In Learn, open the desired course (e.g. Biol 376). 

• Scroll down until you see the "Course Tools" widget; click on the "Instructor Tools" link. 

• You will be directed to an IST page called "LearnTools My Course." Click the link for "MS Teams Request." 

An MS Team will be created the same day it is requested. Course roster sync will occur on the first day the LEARN course is available to students.  

Schedule a meeting

Scheduling with the desktop application

There are multiple ways to schedule a meeting in Teams using the desktop application.

• To schedule a meeting with only the people who are members of a specific chat, go to that chatroom and under the chatbox, click the "Schedule meeting" button. It is the square with a plus sign inside of it, and says "Schedule meeting" when hovering the mouse over it.

  • A page will pop up with options to fill in the title, date and time of the meeting, a description of the meeting, and whether it is a reoccuring meeting. Fill these in with the desired information.

  • Click "Save" to complete the meeting and automatically send invitations out to the attendees.

• To schedule a meeting with anyone and manually add the attendees, click the calendar symbol on the left side of the screen.

  • Once taken to the calendar page, click "New meeting" on the top right corner of the screen.

  • A page will pop up with options to fill in the title, date and time of the meeting, a description of the meeting, and whether it is a reoccuring meeting. Fill these in with the desired information.

  • Enter the email addresses of the desired attendees into the "Add required attendees" field. If attendance is optional, click the "+ Optional" button beside this field and add the email address there.

  • Click "Save" to complete the meeting and automatically send invitations out to the attendees.

Scheduling with Outlook

• In Outlook, click the calendar symbol on the left side of the screen.

• At the top of the page, click "New Teams Meeting".

• Fill in the fields with the necessary information of the meeting. This includes the email addresses of desired attendees.

• Click "Send" to complete the meeting and send email invitations to the attendees.

Assign roles

Before a meeting

In order to assign a role, a meeting must first be scheduled. To schedule a meeting, see Schedule a meeting. Once a meeting is scheduled, the following steps allow one to assign roles to attendees:

• In Microsoft Teams, click on the calendar symbol on the left side of the screen.

• Double click on the meeting that was created, in order to open a new page.

• Click "Meeting options"

• Under "Who can present?" there are a few options which allows one to assign roles

  • Everyone: Assigns the presenter role to everyone who joins the meeting.

  • People in my organization: If you are a member of an organization (Such as the University of Waterloo) only attendees who are also part of that same organization are given presenter privileges.

  • Specific people: Allows one to choose who will be given presenter privileges from a list of attendees.

  • Only me: Only you, the organizer, will have presenter privileges. All other attendees will not be presenter.

During a meeting

Note: if the meeting is a recurring one, changing the roles during a meeting will only apply this time. Next time, the meeting privileges wlll be reset. In order to change the privileges permanently for a recurring meeting, see Before a meeting.

• Click Show participants in the meeting controls panel in order to see a list of all the people currently in the meeting.

• Hover over the name of the person whose role you want to change and select More options.

• From there, select Make a presenter to give presenter privileges, or Make an attendee to remove presenter privileges.

Breakout rooms

• Breakout room creation during meetings

• Breakout room creation before meetings

• Breakout room manager assignment during meetings

• Breakout room manager assignment before meetings

Breakout room creation

During a meeting

• During a meeting, at the bottom of the screen in the meeting controls toolbar, click the Breakout rooms button. It looks like a smaller square inside of a larger one.

• On the pop up page, fill in the number of breakout rooms desired and whether the attendees should be sorted into those rooms automatically or manually.

  • Automatically:  Attendees are distributed evenly and randomly into the breakout rooms.

  • Manually: The organizer gets to choose which attendees are placed in which breakout rooms. If selecting manually:

    • Choose the people you want in a room by selecting the checkboxes next to their names.

    • Select the down arrow next to Assign and choose a specific room for them.

    • Repeat the previous steps until everyone in the meeting is assigned to a room. When you're done, select Confirm.

• Click "Create rooms".

Before a meeting

• In Teams, click the calendar symbol on the left side of the screen.

• Double click the meeting in the calendar which one wants to add breakout rooms to. This meeting must already have been scheduled.

• Click "Breakout rooms" and select "Create rooms".

• Select how many breakout rooms are to be created, and click "Add rooms".

• Click "Assign participants" and choose whether the attendees should be sorted into the rooms automatically or manually.

  • Automatically:  Attendees are distributed evenly and randomly into the breakout rooms.

  • Manually: The organizer gets to choose which attendees are placed in which breakout rooms. If selecting manually, click "Next" and:

    • Choose the people you want in a room by selecting the checkboxes next to their names.

    • Select the down arrow next to Assign and choose a room for them.

    • Repeat the previous steps until everyone in the meeting is assigned to a room. When you're done, select Confirm.

Assigning a breakout room manager

The organizer of the meeting can delegate breakout room abilities to attendees that already have presenter privileges. A breakout room manager can: Add and delete rooms, assign and reassign participants to rooms, open and close rooms, join any room, set time limits for room sessions, send announcements, and recreate rooms.

Only one attendee can be the breakout room manager at a given time.

During a meeting

• During a meeting, at the bottom of the screen in the meeting controls toolbar, click the Breakout rooms button. It looks like a smaller square inside of a larger one.

• Select "Room settings", which is visible as a gear icon.

• Toggle on the "Assign presenters to manage rooms" slider to on.

• If no one in the meeting is designated as a presenter, select Go to Meeting options to add presenters and choose who you want to be a room manager. 

• Otherwise, clicking the dropdown arrow allows one to select the desired attendee (with presenter privileges) to become a breakout room manager.

• Clicking the back arrow within the page automatically saves the changes made.

Before a meeting

• In Teams, click the calendar symbol on the left side of the screen.

• Double click the meeting in the calendar which one wants to add breakout rooms to. This meeting must already have been scheduled.

• Select "Breakout rooms" and click "Room settings".

• Toggle on the "Assign presenters to manage rooms" slider to on.

• Click "Search for presenters" and choose who is to be the breakout room manager.