Microsoft Teams - In break out rooms how can I assign certain people to stay in the same room, but the others to always shuffle?

Hi @Jennifer Morales,

Thank you for posting your question to the Microsoft Q&A Forum.

From your inquiry, I understand that your end goal here is:

• Mentors stay in the same room each round
• Mentees shuffle to meet a new mentor each round

I'd love to provide you some of my insights on what Teams can do for shuffling based on the official document: Manage breakout rooms in Microsoft Teams - Microsoft Support

• Teams supports participant shuffle in breakout rooms (randomly reassigning people to rooms, either everyone or just the unassigned folks). Organizers/co‑organizers/breakout managers can shuffle before or during a meeting via Rooms → Assign participants → Shuffle. 
• To keep mentors fixed, you manually assign mentors to their rooms with, rename those rooms with their name and then use Shuffle → Only unassigned participants so only mentees are redistributed. 

• If someone leaves the meeting mid‑round and you want to exclude them from the next shuffle, use Recreate rooms → Automatically assign; this rebuilds rooms using only current attendees (quick way to avoid pairing with departed participants)

How you set up breakout rooms largely depends on your pre-meeting preparation and who you include in the meeting invite. If you want the least troubleshooting and the ability to pre-assign rooms, the best approach is to invite everyone, mentors, mentees, and moderators, to the calendar event. This ensures pre-assignment works and reduces join-flow issues. Alternatively, you can invite only moderators and share the join link with mentors and mentees later. This option works, but you’ll need to assign rooms live during the meeting, which gives you less control and requires more effort in real time.

When deciding how participants should join via desktop app or web browser, it’s important to consider their roles. For organizers and breakout room managers, the Teams desktop app (Windows or macOS) is strongly recommended because it provides the full feature set for managing breakout rooms, including creating and managing rooms, shuffling participants, setting timers, and sending announcements. For mentors and mentees, either desktop or web works, but the desktop app offers the smoothest experience with faster room transitions and fewer technical issues, especially if they’re using the latest version.

Note: 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. 

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. 

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

I'm looking forward to your reply. 

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Thank you for your response!

I will be having a test run soon using the tips you provided.

I can report back afterwards!

Thank you again for your tips!