Webinar in Microsoft Teams: Breaking down Teams live events capabilities

For the people familiar with Microsoft Teams, it is known largely as collaboration tool for businesses to quickly communicate via text and audio/video calling along with group file management and editing capabilities. However, Teams can also be utilized to host live events. Live events like webinars are a great way to engage with audiences in an online setting. These are events where the communication is largely conducted as one or more individuals presenting to a large group that viewing the presentation and interacting with chat, polls, or questions.

What are Teams Live Events?

Microsoft Teams Live Events are the spiritual successor, even the direct upgrade, to Skype Meeting Broadcast and will eventually be a full replacement. Teams Live Events provides tools to conduct webinars or other larger, more one-way communication meetings within the Teams interface that many are familiar with and find easy to use. The events can be watched live through Teams, Yammer, and Stream. Audience interaction can be facilitated through a moderated Q & A function or via Yammer conversations.

The makeup of a live event

The building blocks of a live event in Teams are: scheduling, production (both inside and outside of Teams), the Stream platform, eCDN platform, and the audience’s experience. The scheduling process of events is relatively quick and easy. Simply click the drop down arrow next to the New Meeting button on the calendar in Teams and select Live Event. The resulting menu allows for the event details to be set including date/time, the name of the event, and any additional producers or presenters that may be involved with the event.

The production of the event itself is very crucial to the event’s success. Teams Live Events supports a variety of production foundations whether it be a simple forward webcam and mic to larger, more professional setups with multiple cameras. The quickest method is to simply have the production run through Teams itself with the equipment directly connected to the computer. For those with external devices set up like mixers and switchboards, the event can be produced in Stream and ran through Microsoft Teams.

The streaming platform itself is comprised of two parts. Azure Media Services allows the content to be distributed better to a wide variety of devices and ensuring that the content is accessible. The Azure Content Delivery Network focuses keeping the connection stable for all attendees and minimizing any buffering.

Audience experience

The experience of attendees is vital to a successful live event. Even for events that are mostly just a presentation to a large audience, it is important to incorporate some sort of audience interaction, like Q & A. The audience experience runs through Stream player for events produced in Teams and through Azure Media Player for those produced externally. It works across all device types and helps to facilitate the two-way conversation that helps keep the audience engaged.

Admin experience

Administrators can also access the live event usage report to view analytics of live events in real time. It and help to break down live events by date and time, organizers, producers, how many views it has, how it was produced, whether it is set to record the event, and more.

For producers running the show, the interface is very intuitive. When hosting the event through Teams, the producer will see two content windows and a bottom bar. This bottom bar contains all of the video feeds and content items that can be used within the production. Using the share content button at the top right, similar to normal Teams meetings, can add a screen share as available content. The left window is a preview of the content or video item, and the right window is what is currently live and being displayed to the audience. Simply click the send live button to push the window from the preview to live.

Admin roles

There are three roles for the administrators and back-end workers of live events. Organizers are the creators of the event and handle the event scheduling, permissions, production method, configure the initial event options like Q & A, invite attendees, and set the roles and permissions for others. Producers focus on making sure the production of the event itself runs smoothly. They will be the ones working with the producer screen in the previous section. They start and stop the event, share videos and content, and set up the layouts. Presenters are the forward-facing talent that directly engage the audience. This may be simply through the actual presentation of the webinar, but can also moderate the Q & A sessions.