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AStarr717's avatar
AStarr717
Copper Contributor
Feb 21, 2024

Have the Town Hall kinks been worked out yet?

We hosted our first Town Hall using the new feature in late January. In general, it went well with a few minor issues.

 

First, our main presenter was unable to see the powerpoint they were sharing. I have heard of other groups having this same problem. We simply had another presenter share the powerpoint on their behalf, but it caused a last minute panic. 

 

Second, several of our presenters were coming through pretty choppy - freezing a lot and dropping. I am not sure if it just happened that several people were having connectivity issues at once, or if Teams was not able to support the meeting broadcast to 1000+ people. 

 

We are hoping to continue to use Teams as our main Town Hall service instead of using an outside company but leadership is concerned with it's reliability. Has anyone held a large meeting with success in the last couple of weeks? 

  • JakeSully's avatar
    JakeSully
    Copper Contributor

    AStarr717 

     

    I ran and Teams Town Hall on 2/20 with ~1200+ attendees and everything worked smoothly. 

    Do you happen to know if your able to integrate with the eCDN? That might improve your connection issues. 

     

    I have had issues in the past with presenters, but it usually comes down to the device they are using. More often than not, I will have a presenter quit, and rejoin the meeting if they are having issues.

  • AStarr717 I will say internet speed greatly affects the quality of a Town hall. I generally have an upload speed of around 200-300 Mbps on wifi and 700-800Mbps when wired. I make sure the people organizing the session and sharing slides are hard-wired and on a good network. And close out of any excess applications. I use speedtest.net to test prior to the session. It makes a significant different in quailty of the session especially if you have embedded videos or want good video quality for speakers.

    I also created these guides to help show the difference between webinars and town halls so leadership can quickly know which offering does what: Teams Webinar Vs. Town Halls (bpb-us-e2.wpmucdn.com)

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