Forum Discussion
We had our Town Hall in Teams! But not everyone could chat!
We convinced our exec team to use Teams for our company Town Hall meeting instead of Zoom. It seemed to go great. We had just under 300 people, internal and external, in the call, and about 12 presenters. We handled Q&A through chat and it seemed to go really well!
Until afterwards, when I got on another call and people were complaining that they couldn't use the chat feature. The chat button simply wasn't there for them. These weren't guests, either. They were people internal to our company.
Now I've got egg on my face. I need to be able to reassure our leadership team that this won't happen again, or they're going to go back to Zoom.
(And we did look at using a Live Event, but we didn't like it because we couldn't tell how many people were in the event when we started, if any.)
What I can tell them?
Hi Mary.
Yes, having the Town Halls in a channel of a Team (with the name "Town Hall meetings"?) sounds like a more stable and logical solution, in my ears. I'm sure that everyone will be able to chat with this solution (except the external guests, which in fact is why I asked you if it is a private or Team meeting). All of you Town Halls would be kept accessible in that channel for the employees, and you could even add the app "Channel calendar" which makes it easier for the people to find the right town hall they are looking for.
On the admin part: Are you aware of the feature "organization-wide Team" where every user in the organization is pulled in as a member, and that keeps the membership up to date with Active Directory as users join and leave the organization, btw? That could definitely facilitate the administration for you. See https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/create-an-org-wide-teamAnother benefit of having the Town Halls in a channel is that everybody would automatically be invited (the Town Hall would place itself in everyone's calendar) as they are members of the Team. Having the Town Halls as a private meeting makes it cumbersome to invite everybody, no?
//Magnus
9 Replies
- Hi Mary. Did you create the meeting as part of a specific Team or as a private meeting? I think that matters, you see. /Magnus
- It was a private meeting. I think it was because we were adding people from the lobby all at once and some people got missed.
They're still OK with using Teams for the next one, so I'm thinking we'll use a shared account to create the meeting so the producer can log in as the meeting organizer.
We have a Team that I think everyone in the company is a member of (or we can make sure we add everyone before the next Town Hall). Would it be better to schedule the meeting in a channel in that Team instead?Hi Mary.
Yes, having the Town Halls in a channel of a Team (with the name "Town Hall meetings"?) sounds like a more stable and logical solution, in my ears. I'm sure that everyone will be able to chat with this solution (except the external guests, which in fact is why I asked you if it is a private or Team meeting). All of you Town Halls would be kept accessible in that channel for the employees, and you could even add the app "Channel calendar" which makes it easier for the people to find the right town hall they are looking for.
On the admin part: Are you aware of the feature "organization-wide Team" where every user in the organization is pulled in as a member, and that keeps the membership up to date with Active Directory as users join and leave the organization, btw? That could definitely facilitate the administration for you. See https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/create-an-org-wide-teamAnother benefit of having the Town Halls in a channel is that everybody would automatically be invited (the Town Hall would place itself in everyone's calendar) as they are members of the Team. Having the Town Halls as a private meeting makes it cumbersome to invite everybody, no?
//Magnus
- Congratulations on that big step! It is great when the organization trusts you and things work, for the most part. I'm curious as to when people were trying to chat? You mentioned that afterwards, what that after the town hall people were still trying to chat through the Town Hall chat?
I will vouch for Live Events. It should tell you (in the Producer role) that people have joined and how many. You can also tell by going to the Team Admin Console afterwards to look at the Live Event. My previous company has run 5 Town Halls through Live Events, there was a learning curve for the first one, but afterwards, it was used with no issues and Leadership and Employees enjoyed that forum. - Firstly congratulations on accomplishing the town hall on Teams. To course correct, can you reach out to the folks that couldn't get in on the chat and work on a way to ensure you have plans to ensure it doesn't happen again? E.g. perhaps you could do a test run and gather learnings. The other approach I've used is creating an Observations | Learnings | Next Steps log. Meaning create a grid documenting the different themes themes you observed from the town hall, learnings gained and actions you're going to take for the next event to ensure it's a better experience. If you came to me with that type of grid, then my perception would be this is someone that is going to keep improving our events and I should let you keep trying. Worse case, your manager might ask you to go back to zoom and most likely appreciate you making the effort. Regardless, congratulations again ... influencing is an accomplishment of its own.
- UGH! That is the worst. It sounds like chat worked for some people? You can always tell them "Thank you for trusting me enough to try teams instead of zoom. New technology comes with a learning curve and I am learning at the same time." However, I understand the issue is more about the perception that Teams wont work for the use case in the future.
When a similar situation came up for me in the past, I reminded them of other times where adopting something went well, that I am human, and change is hard but you must stick with it to be successful. One experience is not enough to write off a whole app, apps are getting better everyday and if the feature is not there, you will watch for when it is released and try again. If it was a technical issue, you will follow through to find out what it was and do your best to mitigate for it in the future. Not every time can be perfect. - I have a little more information. It looks like not everyone was added to the chat when they joined the meeting. We did have it set so everyone had to wait in the lobby, which meant a bunch of people were all admitted at once. I don't know if that made a difference???
