Microsoft Live Events on Microsoft Teams

Reviewing the “Live Events” feature on Teams

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Published: September 26, 2018

Rebekah Carter - Writer

Rebekah Carter

Microsoft Teams is the chat-focused collaboration solution from Microsoft, designed to replace the popular Skype for Business. Teams offers chat-based collaboration, meeting services, calling, and now, live events – a system that gives companies the opportunity to broadcast presentations and meetings to large audiences online.

The live events feature from Microsoft Teams is designed for one-to-many conversations where the host of the event wants to communicate an update or new information to a large group of people at once. Ultimately, the tool will eventually replace the Skype Meetings Broadcast feature, however, for now, Microsoft is still supporting Broadcast with no disruption in service for SfB users.

Who Can Use Microsoft Live Events?

If you want to use Live Events with Microsoft Teams, then there are a few prerequisites. For instance, you’ll need an Office 365 Enterprise E3 or E5 licenses, and you’ll also need to have Microsoft Teams, Skype for Business Online, and Microsoft Stream enabled. Live events users will also have to:

  • Enable private meeting scheduling in Teams
  • Set permissions to allow for the creation of live events in Microsoft Stream
  • Enable live event scheduling in Teams

Features of Microsoft Live Events

The Microsoft Live Events feature for Teams comes with most of the features you’d already be used to if you’ve been using Skype for Business Broadcast up until now. You can still have up to 10,000 attendees, and you can create meetings within Teams, Yammer, and Streams. Other features include:

  • Audience engagement and moderated Q&A sessions
  • Producer windows client
  • Producer Mac client (not available on Skype)
  • Attendee count (not available on Skype)
  • Multiple presentations
  • Screen presentation (not available on Skype)
  • Cloud-based meeting recording
  • Real-time captions and translations
  • Live event captions
  • Post-broadcast attendance reports
  • Partner eCDN Support

What to Expect from Live Events on Teams

The Microsoft Live Events feature on Teams is a powerful way to host one-to-many conversations in your organisation. The service comes equipped with AI-ready features like facial recognition of your attendees, as well as speech-to-text conversions so you can search through your video transcriptions with ease – ideal for compliance purposes. Once the event is over, employees can also skim through video, not just by using specific words or timestamps, but also by scanning through the images of their participants as well.

During the event, employees or attendees watching the stream can comment and ask questions through a dedicated events page and managed Q&A session. Since you can share and schedule live events ahead of time, it’s easy to publish questions and comments either before or after the event too.

Some of our favourite features include:

  • High-quality attendee experiences: For any live event, the most important consideration is the kind of experience that your attendee gets. Live Events in Teams allows you to provide an immersive moment for your audience, which works across browsers, mobile smartphones, and desktops too. Additionally, because attendees can ask questions before, during, or after the meeting, there’s always opportunities for audience engagement
  • Simple scheduling: Attendee experience doesn’t count for much if you can’t make sure that people are turning up to your events. The Teams system allows leaders to create events with a range of attendee permissions and send out invites easily too. You can make sure that your attendees have everything they need to join an event instantly
  • Transcriptions for simple searching: The implementation of AI-enhanced services in Live Streams helps to make it a more compelling solution for modern businesses. Transcription services ensure that you can browse through your meetings and information with ease, and even pick out important pieces of data for future projects. Transcriptions don’t just give an account of what was said in your meeting; they can also be a helpful way to assist you in assigning tasks and analysing company culture too
  • Production options: The Teams Live Events solution supports a wide range of production options, including a quick-start event using your webcam, or external encoder events using high-quality The range of options means that your broadcast can be as informal or formal as you like depending on who you’re broadcasting to, and the information you want to share
  • Azure Content Delivery Network streaming: Thanks to Azure Media Services, you get broadcast quality video streaming from Microsoft Teams, that helps you to reach larger audiences with exceptional clarity. Media services help to enhance the scalability, distribution, and accessibility of the Teams Live Events experience, all while keeping your information secure
  • Regional availability: Teams Live Events is available in multiple regions, including the Americas, Asia Pacific and Europe and Africa

Finishing Thoughts on Microsoft Teams Live Events

Ultimately, Live Events is just another fantastic way that Microsoft is updating and enhancing the experience that companies get with their Teams offering. As more organisations make the transition away from Skype for Business and into Teams, Microsoft is working tirelessly on ensuring that every business of any size can access all the communication and collaboration functionality they could need.

If you’re the kind of company that needs to host one-to-many presentations or events, then Live Events on Microsoft Teams gives you the flexibility and security you need, along with excellent performance and clarity. What’s more, it feels familiar and easy to use thanks to the adoption of various features from the Skype for Business Broadcast tool.

Have you tried Microsoft Teams Live Events for yourself yet? Let us know about your experiences in the comments below!

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