Have the Town Hall kinks been worked out yet?

[AStarr717]

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? 

[#2]

@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.

[#3]

@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)