SETTING UP LIVE EVENTS IN MICROSOFT TEAMS

What are Teams Live Events?

Team Live events is an easy and powerful way to host a webinar from within Teams. Here are some things you can accomplish with Teams Live Events:

  • Schedule, produce and broadcast meetings up to 100K attendees
  • Attendees watch the event live or on-demand via desktop, web, and mobile
  • Q&A manager and attendance reporting directly in Teams
  • Supports hardware-based encoders for advanced events.

What can I do with Teams Live Events to Mimic the In-Person Event?

  • Arrange for various speakers–keynotes, principals, Valedictorians, Salutatorians, multiple speakers, board members, etc. to present and share with audiences.
  • Create a slide show with pictures of graduates and read names aloud for each student to be recognized.
  • Allow parents/family to share congrats using the Q&A manager.
  • Record and share for those that may have missed the live event.

How can we make this happen NOW? 

THE PROCESS

Pre-Production

  • Ensure that all producers/presenters have the Teams client installed on a computer. They cannot act as a producer/presenter from a browser/mobile device.
  • Producers/presenters MUST be authenticated users. For a Guest to be a presenter, they must be added to Azure Active Directory.
  • Producer(s) should run the event on a wired connection and not WiFi, if possible.
  • Have two producers in case something happens to the connection of one.
  • Live Events settings can be adjusted up until the event launches live.
  • Establish your content-sharing practice in advance. If there are multiple presenters, will one person share all content, or will each person share their own?
  • Consider having a back-up live event created and ready to share links should something happen with the original. (This is not required.)
  • Live captions and subtitle language(s) need to be selected before the meeting begins. (Up to 6 languages may be chosen.)
  • Always have a moderator assigned to weed through, answer questions while the session is running, condense similar questions to be asked during a Q&A timeslot.
  • Do a trial run at least once before attempting the Live Event.
  • Schedule the live event for longer than you expect it to last. (Current max time is 4 hours.)

During Production

  • There is no “preview share” before you share your screen. Ensure that content is ready before sharing.
  • The producer will see all screens –Queue, live feed, all presenters, and presenter content.
  • Once you hit the END button, this STOPS the Live Event, and you CANNOT restart. Be VERY careful.
  • Q&A can be turned on and off throughout the production.
  • You CANNOT invite a presenter once the event has started.
  • As a presenter, limit the number of additional devices/streaming from your location that may slow your bandwidth.

 

Post-Production

  • Only Teams Live Events producers have the right to manage the recording.
  • See this documentation for instructions on downloading and sharing.