I’ve raised this topic in various forums and at numerous conferences over the years, but I’m hoping we can initiate a productive dialogue here.

We operate in the L&D space, offering corporate training support for global clients across over a dozen platforms, and have been doing so since the days of Skype. Whether it’s WebEx, Adobe Connect, Zoom, or another platform, the process is generally straightforward. We receive host rights, and we’re set to go.

However, Microsoft Teams is an exception. From the beginning, conducting training sessions as an external vendor on Teams has been extremely challenging. Despite some improvements over the years, one critical piece of functionality is still missing: external users cannot manage breakout rooms.

This oversight is severely impacting our business, as well as many other small businesses like ours, as our corporate clients transition to Teams. Many organizations move to the Microsoft ecosystem partly due to their InfoSec policies, making the issuance of internal organization credentials difficult and often necessitating additional hardware.

It’s not just external vendors who are frustrated. Many of our clients, including the L&D departments of Fortune 500 companies, have actively opposed their companies’ transition to Teams.

We want to embrace these transitions and even endorse and encourage them. Is this functionality on the roadmap? Who do we need to speak to, or what actions are required to fully address this issue? We are eager to discuss the friction points of using Teams for training from the perspective of a company that has facilitated and supported hundreds of thousands of trainings across every major platform over the last decade.

Your thoughts and insights would be greatly appreciated.

​I’ve raised this topic in various forums and at numerous conferences over the years, but I’m hoping we can initiate a productive dialogue here. We operate in the L&D space, offering corporate training support for global clients across over a dozen platforms, and have been doing so since the days of Skype. Whether it’s WebEx, Adobe Connect, Zoom, or another platform, the process is generally straightforward. We receive host rights, and we’re set to go. However, Microsoft Teams is an exception. From the beginning, conducting training sessions as an external vendor on Teams has been extremely challenging. Despite some improvements over the years, one critical piece of functionality is still missing: external users cannot manage breakout rooms.This oversight is severely impacting our business, as well as many other small businesses like ours, as our corporate clients transition to Teams. Many organizations move to the Microsoft ecosystem partly due to their InfoSec policies, making the issuance of internal organization credentials difficult and often necessitating additional hardware. It’s not just external vendors who are frustrated. Many of our clients, including the L&D departments of Fortune 500 companies, have actively opposed their companies’ transition to Teams.We want to embrace these transitions and even endorse and encourage them. Is this functionality on the roadmap? Who do we need to speak to, or what actions are required to fully address this issue? We are eager to discuss the friction points of using Teams for training from the perspective of a company that has facilitated and supported hundreds of thousands of trainings across every major platform over the last decade. Your thoughts and insights would be greatly appreciated.  Read More

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