PowerPoint Live and Webinars Roll Out to Teams

Features were first announced at Microsoft Ignite

4
PowerPoint Live and webinars come to Teams
CollaborationLatest News

Published: May 14, 2021

Rebekah Carter - Writer

Rebekah Carter

Among the most popular UCaaS tools in the world, Microsoft Teams has quickly taken the marketplace by storm. Today, more than 145 million people use Teams to power crucial conversations between staff members. To maintain this leadership, Microsoft frequently delivers new features and functionality designed for the future of work.

In the last year, Microsoft has discovered various wonderful ways to create engaging experiences for employees, even in an unpredictable hybrid environment. Microsoft’s Together mode features have helped remote employees to feel more connected, while bots and integrations create a single pane of glass for productivity. Now, two of the features announced during the Ignite event for Microsoft this year are rolling into Teams too.

Starting now, companies will be able to access PowerPoint Live, and Webinar features from Microsoft Teams. According to a blog released by Microsoft, the “Presenter Mode” feature, which will no doubt be useful for both PowerPoint and Webinar presentations, will roll out in May too.

What to Expect from PowerPoint Live

Microsoft promises that PowerPoint Live, a new solution specially designed for sharing PowerPoint presentations with Teams contacts, will help users deliver more polished pitches and learning experiences from a distance. PowerPoint Live transforms the content sharing experience with helpful tools to improve engagement and user experience.

PowerPoint Live, combined with the impending release of Presenter Mode in Teams will allow anyone to deliver more professional-looking presentations. You can use Presenter Mode to easily access information and notes alongside your presentation. You can view meeting chat, slides, as well as keeping an eye on your audience while you deliver your information.

PowerPoint Live also supports features like seamless transitions between co-presenters when more than one person needs to take the stage. Attendees also have the opportunity to personalize their experience by navigating through content and slides at their own pace. Soon, slide translation capabilities will also allow attendees to select their preferred language and have content translated for them automatically, without affecting other attendees.

The presenter mode feature allows you to feel like you’re standing in the same room as your audience. There are a few different ways to customize your video feed and content with Presenter Mode, including Standout mode, which shows your feed as a silhouette over the shared content. There’s also Reporter mode, which shows your content above your shoulder, and side-by-side mode, which shows your video alongside your content.

New Webinar Experiences from Microsoft Teams

Presenter Mode and PowerPoint Live are just two of the exciting new features now coming to the Microsoft Teams experience. Now, users can also host interactive webinars and meetings for as many as 1,000 attendees in Teams. Through end-to-end webinar support from Microsoft, you can develop a fantastic learning opportunity for your customers and colleagues.

Microsoft’s webinar solution includes custom registration pages and rich presentation options, as well as attendee emails, host controls, and more. You can even take control of attendee chat and video in a webinar or access post-event reporting tools. Analytics give you a better insight into the overall level of participation in your webinar. Plus, you can track engagement and follow up with attendees.

For companies who need to reach more than 1,000 attendees, Teams can support this too. The Microsoft Teams Meeting environment can now scale to accommodate a view-only broadcast for up to 20,000 people. According to Microsoft, this will be a valuable tool for companies exploring the new era of remote and hybrid work.

Long-term Microsoft plans on offering a 10,000-person view-only broadcast option, but the company has doubled the allowance to the end of 2021 to support the remote working environment.

The new Webinar and Meeting experiences available from Microsoft Teams will be valuable to companies keen to host large events and conferences in a virtual environment. For companies uncertain about how to proceed with their event strategy, Microsoft also offers a range of help options. The Live Events Assistance Program, for instance, allows customers to set up, manage, and deliver event experiences that suit their customers.

Microsoft also offers Consulting Services for virtual events, which provide delivery and strategy support for organisations keen to move to larger conferences and custom event experiences online. Microsoft trusted partners also provide solutions for the development, integration, and transformation of your virtual event, no matter the size.

Engaging Webinar and Event Attendees

Both PowerPoint Live and the Webinar function from Microsoft Teams gives today’s companies more ways to engage and impress their audiences. The webinar solution also comes with useful analytics and reporting tools, so you can continue to engage customers after the event ends. Users can easily access analytics and export analytics to their customer relationship management applications.

From May, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Marketing customers will be able to export attendee data directly from Microsoft Teams to create customer journey plans and campaigns. The Microsoft Dynamics 365 Marketing and Microsoft Teams integration will support webinar hosts in delivering more engaging, loyalty-building experiences.

One particularly impressive point to note about the new Ignite features in Microsoft Teams is that anyone can access them. You don’t need to purchase a new product or language to take advantage. The PowerPoint Live and Webinar features are already included in the majority of Office and Microsoft 365 plans available for today’s organizations. Companies can simply start experimenting with new presentation and event features whenever they like.

Microsoft has also released some useful Webinar and PowerPoint Live quick start guides for companies keen to learn how to properly leverage their new services.

 

 

Customer ExperienceMicrosoft TeamsUser Experience
Featured

Share This Post