Live events in Microsoft Teams
Published Jul 12 2018 11:40 AM 101K Views

Today we are excited to announce the public preview of live events within Microsoft Teams. A live event delivers one-to-many video and content streaming to a large online audience while providing centralized control of the shared attendee experience. Live events now empower every organizer,

from Microsoft Teams users all the way to webcasting professionals.  Attendees can join the experience where they are: through Stream, in Yammer or in Teams.

 

In this preview, Teams will have the ability for organizers to create an event with the appropriate attendee permissions, designate fellow event team members and invite attendees.

 

 Live events with M365.png

 

Live event production: Organizers will ultimately have multiple choices in production methods:

 

  • Quick start. The quick start setting enables users to produce their live events using the Teams client. This option is best to facilitate remote participants or if there is a need to use USB audio/video devices connected to a PC.
  • External encoder (coming soon). External encoders can be used by producers to manage their live events with 3rd party hardware and software via Microsoft Stream.  The service will support studio quality equipment (e.g. media mixers) that can stream to a Real-time Messaging Protocol (RTMP)  This option is typically used in large scale events such as company all-hands – where a single stream from a media mixer is broadcasted from multiple in-room inputs. This live event method will be available over the next month.  

 

Planning live events in Microsoft Teams.  Live events in Teams empowers multiple roles to successfully broadcast and participate in an event, including the following: organizer, producer, presenter, and attendee.

 

 Organizer. The organizer manages the live event end to end. This includes creating the event with appropriate attendee permissions, choosing the production method, inviting event team members and attendees and managing event reports. Event reports will include both recording and attendance reports.  With real-time captions & translation (coming soon), the organizer can also specify whether live event attendees can view captions in the supported languages.

 

Organize a new live event in Microsoft TeamsOrganize a new live event in Microsoft Teams

 

Organizer view - production optionsOrganizer view - production options

Producer. As a host of the meeting, producers ensure attendees have a great viewing experience by controlling the media sources that are sent to the event. Additional capabilities include:

  • Start / Stop
  • Share own video
  • Share participant video
  • Share active desktop/window
  • Select layouts
  • Chat with other event team members
  • View live attendee count
  • Moderate Q & A
  • Toggle captions on/off for live event attendees (coming soon)

 

Producer (Quick start) viewProducer (Quick start) view

Producer (External encoder) viewProducer (External encoder) view

Presenter. Presenters send audio, video and/or screen sharing into the live event that uses quick start production method.  A presenter can also moderate Q & A.

 

Presenter viewPresenter view

Attendee. Attendees can experience the event live, using DVR controls or on-demand. Attendees can also interact with the presenters using Teams Q & A or Yammer. Microsoft Teams users will be able to join the live event from the web, desktop and mobile clients.

 

Attendee viewAttendee view

Optimize Bandwidth for the Enterprise Network.  Live events will support 3rd party eCDN providers including Hive, Kollective and Ramp (coming soon).  These providers partner closely with Microsoft and ensure users have a high-quality experience over your network.

 

What’s next for Skype Meeting Broadcast.  Live events with Microsoft 365 will replace the capabilities provided by Skype Meeting Broadcast.  For the public preview release of live events, Microsoft will continue to support Skype Meeting Broadcast, with no disruption in service for new or future events. We encourage you to try out live event in Teams to leverage new features including desktop/window sharing and use of 3rd party software/hardware encoders.

 

Try out a live event today as part of your Teams meetings experience. Documentation on live events is available for IT Pros here

 

82 Comments
Iron Contributor

@Heidi Gloudemans

 

Cool stuff!!

Is this a public preview available to everyone?  

It is rolling out to all tenants?

 

Silver Contributor

So, does everyone have to be a Team "member" to participate?  Or is the Team just the where the event is hosted and non-members can join?

Brass Contributor

Will this be expanded to EDU clients? I know we were excluded from the Skype Broadcast feature so really hope that doesn't happen again with this.

Steel Contributor
I saw this feature light up in Teams for me yesterday. Very exciting! However, when I get to the "Who can watch the live event?" section, the only options are "People and groups" and "Org-wide". "Public" is grayed out with "some of these options are disabled by your IT administrator". Will we be able to enable Public events during the preview, and if yes, what do we need to do as IT administrators to enable Public events?
Iron Contributor

Like @Stephan Swinford I'm curious if you can enable the Public option in this preview version. And if that is possible, how? :)

 

Brass Contributor

I can see live events policies in our admin panel but I cannot create policies. Is live events only available for MS365 and not Office 365 like Skype Broadcast is/was?

Copper Contributor

Awesome! Bye bye gototrainigs

Deleted
Not applicable

Same issue as @Jeff Bentivoglio I can see policies and able to create one but not save it. 

Microsoft

Live events are available in Office 365.  The management of live events in Teams and Skype Admin Center is coming soon.  In the interim, IT admins can manage the live event configuration and policies via Windows PowerShell.  You can find more information on the PowerShell cmdlets in: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/MicrosoftTeams/what-are-teams-live-events.  Thank you! 

Brass Contributor

Thanks for this

Microsoft

@Brent Ellis regarding "So, does everyone have to be a Team "member" to participate?  Or is the Team just the where the event is hosted and non-members can join?", short answer is that they do not have to be a team member to participate.   In the preview, the live event can be created independent of any Team and the organizer can control attendee permissions - attendees can be anonymous users, authenticated Teams users in the company or members of a specific Team/O365 Group/Security Group.  

To recap: 

  • Organizer, Producers and Presenters do not need to be part of any team to participate in the live event as event team members. 
  • If organizer has set the attendee visibility to specific O365 group, then the attendee has to be a Team member to watch the event as attendee. 

 

Brass Contributor

Not working here in UK (education organisation) although the option to create a Live event is there in Teams. As others have reported the policies arent there in the admin centre and so nobody can use it/test it yet. Any idea when these are coming to us in the UK?

Iron Contributor

It is there for us, but we are missing the Q&A option. Is that functionality not yet part of the preview?

Here are the options we have:

Capture.PNG

Also recording does not seem to work for us. 

Wow, love the enthusiasm!
Documentation has been posted here: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/what-are-teams-live-events

@Chloe Gilbert live events is available to most tenants, although not yet to Go-Locals (includes EDU). It will be coming later to those tenants.



Brass Contributor

@Heidi GloudemansThat's a shame. We're not an ordinary EDU user, our organisation Jisc was set to enable people in higher education, further education etc  in the UK to perform at the forefront of international practice by "exploiting fully the possibilities of modern digital empowerment, content and connectivity". Our remit is to explore and recommend products and best practice back to the UK HE and FE colleges and universities. We are also the NREN for the UK network. I suppose we will have to wait a while longer before we recommend this back to the sector ;)

Copper Contributor

Extremely excited about this advancement of Skype Meeting Broadcast (SMB). There are some missing features in SMB that I hope will be addressed in Team Live Events. In SMB, we have no way of knowing who is attending outside of our organization. It would be great to have either pre-registration for an event or an option to require that non-authenticated attendees provide a Name and Email when joining an event. Pre-registration would be very helpful for external events to help understand the number of anticipated attendees so we can plan accordingly for moderated Q&A.

 

PSTN dial-in for outside presenters is missing in SMB. So is the ability to dial-out to add a presenter. This is key.

 

Thanks for your great work!

Brass Contributor

I must be missing the obvious, if I start a live event linked to a Team where do the potential attendees see that there's live event they can join?

Steel Contributor

@Sean Lakusta@Chloe GilbertI agree this would be brilliant for EDU tenancies for remote delivery and meetings across campuses and in Multi Academy Trusts.

Steel Contributor

Will there be branding / skinning options for the web version?

Deleted
Not applicable

We are missing the Q&A option. Is that functionality not yet part of the preview?

Here are the options we have:

Capture.PNG

I do not see that the Q&A is part of the PowerShell commands

 

Steve

Microsoft

@Deleted Q & A is in the process of getting rolled out. I will update this thread once the rollout is complete.  Thank you for trying out the live events functionality and providing your feedback. 

Microsoft

@Kevin Lutz - thank you for these asks! 

1. Pre-registration for live events - in the roadmap

2. Asking anonymous attendees to provide name & email - in the roadmap

3. PSTN dial-in for presenters - available now in preview 

4. Dialing out to invite other presenters - in the roadmap 

Brass Contributor

How many PSTN dial-in users are supported for live events? Does this follow the meeting capabilities of Teams at 80 users? 

What Caption languages are supported? We need more languages that the default English, Spanish etc. If we want to give more people access to video/broadcast we have to add more. 

Brass Contributor

Cool!!!

I frequently use Skype Broadcast and I miss a feature that lets me know exactly how many external participants joined the meeting anonymously (No Authentication). Is this possible in Teams?

Copper Contributor

We are testing the live events and have found that the Moderator Q&A is not available in the live event. Any insight on how to enable the Q&A portion that is shown in the MS article -

 

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Microsoft-Teams-Blog/Live-events-in-Microsoft-Teams/ba-p/2149...

 

Producer. As a host of the meeting, producers ensure attendees have a great viewing experience by controlling the media sources that are sent to the event. Additional capabilities include:

Start / Stop
Share own video
Share participant video
Share active desktop/window
Select layouts
Chat with other event team members
View live attendee count
Moderate Q & A
Toggle captions on/off for live event attendees (coming soon)

Steel Contributor
We also do not have access to meeting recordings. The 'Resources' section in the event details pane is missing. https://support.office.com/en-us/article/manage-a-live-event-recording-and-reports-in-teams-6d1f5da9...
Microsoft

Here are answers to some of the questions: 

1. How many max PSTN dial-in users are supported for live events? 

Teams live events supports PSTN dial-in for presenters in the inner Teams meeting of the live event.  If you share the dial-in information with the attendees, you risk the broadcast getting interrupted if the attendee is not muted (as in the initial release the mixed audio from all participants is made part of the broadcast).  The max of 250 PSTN users is supported per meeting.  If presenters will be dialing in, please share best practices around muting/unmuting with them ahead of the live event.

 

2. I frequently use Skype Broadcast and I miss a feature that lets me know exactly how many external participants joined the meeting anonymously (No Authentication). Is this possible in Teams?

We have added a feature in Teams live event producer UI that shows the attendee count.  If the event has external participants watching the live event, this will be reflected in the count. The event organizer can also download the attendee report from live events resources section in the meeting details UI, to get log of attendees joined for the event.  We do have a feature in our backlog that will show 'Total unique attendee counts' for a live event to the producers.  

 

3. Why don't I see Moderated Q & A and live event resources functionality? 

This functionality is being rolled out in stages to various tenants.  We expect to have the rollout complete for all tenants within next few weeks.

 

4. How many real-time captions languages are supported in the initial release? 

The initial release will support English, Chinese & German as the spoken languages for the captions in the quick start live events.  We will incrementally add support for more languages after the release. 

Iron Contributor

Per this statement here "Live events with Microsoft 365 will replace the capabilities provided by Skype Meeting Broadcast" , does this mean Broadcast Meetings will be eventually deprecated? And if so will Live Events be made available to Skype for Business Users be they on premises or in the cloud? If Live Events is only available to Teams users then presumably SfB users have the inconvinience of running the Teams client in parallel to schedule a Live Event? Some clarity on whats possible for SfB users would be much appreciated.

For those who ask how to enable Public options, you can find how here

 

I'm testing Live Events, same as other I'm wonder to know when Q&A will be available because we need feedback from the attendees right now is only one way communication.

Also I tried to join using a mobile client for Public Live Event, and it did not work. Mobile is not supported yet to join as an attendee on Live Events?

Iron Contributor

I get the following error when trying to create a live event, even after ensuring that the broadcast policies are set correctly:

"You don't have permission to create a live event. Contact your IT admin.""You don't have permission to create a live event. Contact your IT admin."

Iron Contributor

Live event is for guest too?

Copper Contributor

I'm trying to test out the Live Event but I only have options to change attendees from Presenter to Producer - there is not option for Attendee?

Microsoft

@Chantelle Minnie can you share more details on your scenario? What exactly would you like to do by changing an attendee to Presenter/Producer?

Microsoft

@Rodolfo Castro Aguilar the QnA functionality is rolled out to all eligible customers now.  Please try again let me know if you run into any issues.  Attendees can join from mobile, but we currently do not support presenter joining from mobile (it is in our backlog).  

Microsoft

@Vincenzo Annunziata we currently do not support adding Guest users as presenters or attendees to a live event.  The support for this functionality is in our backlog. 

Copper Contributor

@Deleted I have the same issue.

 

Any luck figuring out what you need to change?

Microsoft

@Deleted @Chris Handy what O365 licenses do you have? The preview is currently enabled only in E3 and E5.  

Iron Contributor

We have Office 365 A5

Microsoft

@Deleted Got it! We will be enabling live events in Office 365 A3 and A5 in next few weeks.   We will announce as soon as that support is added.  If you want access to the functionality sooner and would like to provide us early feedback, you can join our TAP program (https://aka.ms/JoinTAP100).   

Copper Contributor

@Sonu Arora I was upgraded to an E3 license last night, but still encounter the same message when I attempt to schedule a live event.

Microsoft

@Chris Handy  You may need to wait up to 24 hours to get fully provisioned on the new license.   If you still see issue after 24 hours, to further assist you, we will need to engage more folks through the support process. 

Please work with your IT admin to open an issue via O365 admin center. 

Copper Contributor

@Sonu Arora I am still experiencing the same issue, and it has been over 24 hours.

 

When I go to submit a support ticket in the admin center, it tells me to contact my partner. We'll already brought this to their attention, and with it being so new they do not know how to support/resolve the issue.

Copper Contributor

@Sonu Arora will event pre-registration or registration on joining be a part of the Live Events preview? Or will this only be added later on? I didn't see this functionality listed in the roadmap.

Iron Contributor

What are the plans for supporting polling in Teams Live Events?

We have a use case where we want to engage with people who are physically present in the townhall, so they would benefit from a standalone polling option and people who would join virtually using Teams Live Events and want to use the poll as part of the Live Event.

 

At the moment we are investigating seperate polling solutions like Pigeonhole or sli.do.

Copper Contributor

 Hi There, Once you have done a Live Broadcast and you hit download on the recording and attendee list where do they get saved ?

Brass Contributor

@Heidi Gloudemans Can anyone confirm if IE11 does not support using Q&A during a Live Event?

On this site https://support.office.com/he-il/article/attend-a-live-event-in-teams-a1c7b989-ebb1-4479-b750-c86c9b... Internet Explorer is not stated as a supported browser, though, IE11 does support MSE to some extent.


This is not mentioned in the know issues list here: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/known-issues and IE11 is a supported browser for the Teams client itself.

 

 

Learn Expert

I like it :) Live Events from Yammer, Teams and go worldwide! 

Copper Contributor

Any further word on enabling live events for A3 and A5? Do you need these to join a live event?

Microsoft

A3 and A5 users can now create live events. Please give it a try.  

 @Louis Carmine as long as a user has a Teams license (in any O365 SKU), they can watch the live event.

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