How to use Microsoft Teams Town Hall

Giuliano De Luca [MVP] has presented a comprehensive guide on how to leverage the newly introduced Microsoft Teams Town Hall in a YouTube video. This successor to Microsoft Teams Live Events is an enhanced platform designed for hosting sizable, either internal or external, activities aiming to foster connections within organizations.

The guide dives into the basics, starting with how to organize a town hall meeting to customizing the event and the subsequent emails to be sent. During an event, organizers and participants interact in real-time, sharing essential content while controlling whatever viewers can see, thereby elevating the presentation level. While attendees automatically join the forum with their cameras and microphones off, they can actively engage through the Q&A section.

Some of the key features being introduced in this fresh Team's experience is the large attendee capacity of up to 10,000 or 20,000 for premium users, and the ability to host concurrent events. In addition, third-party eCDN providers can now support Town Hall, with Office and Microsoft 365 offerings hosting up to 15 events simultaneously across a tenant, expanding to 50 concurrent events for Teams Premium.

 

 

When to schedule a town hall?

• You’re hosting a large-scale event.
• You need high-quality content sharing or streaming capabilities.
• The experience is mostly consumption-based for attendees.
• You’re providing extensive coverage of an event (up to 30 hours)

 

The green room feature allows organizers and presenters to connect and prepare with a virtual green room separate from the attendees. Organizer

 

Is can then manage attendees' view, ensuring they only see shared content and the participants brought on-screen for a polished presentation. Furthermore, event concurrency, event duration, eCDN support, green room, real time- moderation, live translated captions among other features will streamline the whole process. Also, the ability to hide the participant list puts the presenters and organizers in control, ensuring attendees focus only on the shared content.

Among the other amenities being introduced with Town Halls are productive tools like RTMP-in and RTMP-out, which provide seamless integration with external hardware or software-based encoders and allow live streaming to third-party platforms. Furthermore, advanced amenities for Premium Town Halls users include a structured Q&A session, on-demand recording, email communication, and customization, and an in-depth attendee reporting system.

 

 

While Town Halls are set to eventually achieve features similar to the Teams live events, there will be several differences in the experience at the outset, such as the role changes or the ability to invite external presenters, which will be launched at the end of October. Also, functionalities like DVR and Viva Engage integration will be rolled out in the coming months.

Considering the advanced features and flexibility, it's evident that Team's Town Halls are set to replace Live Events as the future of virtual corporate meetings, webinars or company-wide town halls. Existing Teams Live Events will be discontinued by September 30, 2024. The new and expanded features aim to make transitions easier for users and create a streamlined and efficient platform, setting the stage for the future of virtual event hosting. For more detailed information, please click here.

Embracing Town Halls: The Future of Virtual Meetings

As companies continue to accommodate remote work situations, finding efficient ways to connect across a space as vast as the internet is paramount. And this is why Microsoft has integrated the new 'Town Hall' feature into its Teams service. Town Hall enables internal as well as external events, providing an effective one-to-many platform for activities such as company-wide town halls, global team meetings, and even fireside chats. Given its advanced production capabilities and attendee engagement methods, Town Hall sets the stage for a novel corporate event experience. Clearly, the digital world of corporate meet-ups is morphing into a more efficient, inclusive, and innovative era.