I have done some initial testings and can say I am not a huge fan so far of new "Townhall". Several features are missing and the ones provided seems to be not working as expected. Looks to be under-developed product, launched too soon.
- The added "Presenters" in the invite seem to be joining as "attendee". End the meeting and re-join might re-add it as Presenter but cannot guarantee.
- Missing ability to add people as presenter in the Townhall. Live-events had the ability to 'Request to join" to additional users who were not part of the invite.
- Q/A - Dissatisfied with this. Live-events q/A was far more easy, and efficient. Please bring back ability for moderator to reply to the questions without disclosing their name. Also, have noticed there is a noticeable lag in the questions being updated. Live-events Q/A will be preferred over this any day
- When townhall is ended, "Attendees" don't get notified that "Live-event has ended" rather it gives them the impression that call is dropped - which is not good from user perspective
- "Presenters having the ability to dictate who to "Bring on screen". This takes away the ability from the organizer to control the event and can be quite catastrophic feature in a large event.
- Automatic "Screen-sharing" for attendees. There may be cases where I only want my presenters to see shared screen and not attendees - this is missing - would want the ability to "Queue" things in advance back. Also, rather than bringing the camera one-by-one on screen , I rather have it all preset and then send the view of multiple cameras live
- Automatic notification of Recording to Attendees - again this is not a good feature. We publish the recording through dedicated sharepoint sites and would not want users to have link to recording that is in a user's one-drive.
Microsoft