Teams
Teams Live Events – Produce or Present – It’s your choice…

Teams Live Events – Produce or Present – It’s your choice…

I have been looking at the Teams Live Event feature as of late, in-depth, and out the box, it seems that its fluid (for what it can do…).

The live events functionality of Teams is Microsoft’s answer to the modern workplace, edging towards the public outreach style with one-off style meetings/announcements.

The Client(s)

The basic premise remains the same, all meetings are run from the Teams client, this enables the producer to control the flow, guide the presenters, and have access to the open (but policy-driven) Q&A section of the stream.

There are 4 main roles that are played within the live Event’s solution, these include:

Organizer

  • Schedules a Live Event and ensures the event is set up with the correct permissions for attendees and the event group, who will manage the event
  • Schedule meetings from either Teams, Yammer, or Stream directly
  • Live event creation
  • Permission grants
  • Set’s production method
  • Configures event options
  • Invites  attendees (via email or public URL)
  • Selects event group members
  • Manages reports

Producer

  • Overseeing the whole event
  • Controls starting and stopping the event
  • Shares own video
  • Shares participant video
  • Shares active desktop or window
  • Select the layout

Presenter

  • Presents the audio, video, or screen to the live event, or moderates Q&A.

Attendee (Internal or Public)

  • A viewer
  • Watches the event live or on-demand
  • Can participate in Q&A

Live Event Permissions

Events can be scheduled for public viewing – by default, this is switched off from a tenant level and a Global Administration will need to switch it on.

  • People and groups: If you select this, you will see a box where you can add a person by name or email address – or you can add an Office 365 group.
  • Org-wide: This will enable anyone within your org, to join the event simply by signing in
  • Public: This means anyone can join the live event – as long as they have a link to the event or shortened in some fashion.

A few additional options can be set here to further lock down the event itself:

The options are split into ‘Teams’ and ‘External app or device’.

We’ll be focusing on the Teams option, as the external device option is for situations where you might be recording and presenting from something like a professional film set-up with an external encoder – which is beyond the scope of most employees’ needs.

  • Recording available to producers and presenters: this is greyed out as this is automatically enabled
  • Recording available to attendees: this means a recording of the event will be created for anyone that missed the event or for those who want to watch the event again later
  • Captions: You’ll have the option to translate this to up to six languages
  • Attendee engagement report: this report gives you the option of accessing an engagement report which gives you information on the attendees
  • Q&A: this is toggled off, but you can toggle it on if you want event attendees to be able to ask questions to the presenters to inform a Q&A session during the live event

When the event becomes live, you will find the layout pleasing and easy to use, for now, we can only share desktop, have audio and video, but usually, this is enough for getting the basics out there.

Give it a go and have a play, it’s the only way to see what it can really do – For something that’s included in your licence it’s a great tool for small outreaches, contains enough power to use out the box instead of splashing out on a whole new enterprise solution!

Ben