What is MS Teams live event?
- MS Teams live events is designed to broadcast to up to 10,000 attendees and is a more difficult tool that ideally requires formal training. If you are organizing a meeting with fewer than 200 attendees, we recommend you use teams meetings.
- Microsoft Teams live events enables you to schedule, produce and broadcast events to large audiences online.
- Microsoft Teams live events are different from Microsoft Teams meetings in that they are predominantly for one way communication with large groups and can accommodate large numbers of up to 10,000 participants.
- Microsoft Teams live events are one-to-many communications where the host of the event leads the interactions and audience participation is primarily to view the content shared by the host.
Networking and bandwidth considerations
In Teams
- RTP traffic sensitive to the network
- Delay can affect interactions between presenters.
- Jitter and Packet loss can affect the quality of audio and video.
- Quality issues with the presenter will affect all participants.
Externally
- Quality issues in the RTMP stream will affect all participants.
Live Event Attendees
- Watching a video is not real-time communication and is not as sensitive to networking issues.
- Networking issues might lead to delays, buffering, or reduced video quality.
- Plan for sufficient bandwidth for multiple people to watch from the same location. Requirement of Enterprise Content Delivery Network (eCDNs)
Delivering content within the network
Client Requirements: Live bitrate profile
- 720p: 3.5 Mbps
- 540p: 2.2 Mbps
- 396p: 1.4 Mbps
- 288p: 850 Kbps
- 216p: 550 Kbps
- 192p: 200 Kbps
eCDNsolutions
- Reduce network traffic crossing the company firewall.
- P2P or cache proxy solutions.
- Real-time monitoring and in-depth analytics.
- Video delivery and network overview.
Live event types
There are two ways you can produce a live event:
Producing a live event using teams
You can use teams to produce and mix content. From a producer’s perspective, live events produced in Teams look and operate in a similar way to a standard video meeting-except the producer chooses which video and content source is used as the live feed.
Producing a Live Event Using External Broadcasting Devices
Live events produced using an external app or device take a single pre-mixed input from a hardware or software encoder. It’s not possible to mix additional content sources with an external encoder event, but it does allow producers the ability to use all the mixing capabilities in their existing system. The encoder sends the content directly to Teams via an RTMP ingest, a widely supported industry standard. Events produced outside of Teams are brought into Teams using Microsoft Steam, which means the attendees must be authenticated and cannot be anonymous.
Event Group Roles
Live events in Teams has multiple roles (organizer, producer, presenter, and attendee) to broadcast and participate in an event.
Organizer
Schedules a live event and ensures the event is set up with the right permissions for attendees and the event group, which will manage the event.
- Creates the live event.
- Sets attendee permissions.
- Select the production method.
- Configures event options (for example, the moderated Q&A).
- Invites attendees.
- Selects event group members.
- Manages reports generated after the event is over.
- For more information, see the organizer’s checklist.
Producer
As a host, make sure attendees have a great viewing experience by controlling the live event stream.
- Starts and stops the live event.
- Shares its own video.
- Share the participant’s video.
- Shares the active desktop or window.
- Selects layouts.
Presenter
Presents audio, video, or a screen for the live event, or moderates Q&A.
Note: Presenters can only share audio, video, or a screen (desktop or window) in live events produced in Teams.
Attendee
A viewer. Watches the event live or on-demand using DVR controls, either anonymously or authenticated. Can participate in Q&A.
Supported Platforms
System Requirements and Supported Platforms
- Supported operating systems: Windows 10 and later (32-bit and 64-bit), Mac OS X 10.10 and later.
- Supported mobile operating systems: Android 4.4 and later, iOS 10 and later.
- Supported web browsers: Chrome (last 3 versions), Edge RS2 and later, Firefox (last 3 versions), Internet Explorer 11, Safari.
Core Capabilities and Features Offered in Live Events
| Capability | Events produced in Teams | Events produced in external app or device |
| Maximum audience size | 10,000 attendees | 10,000 attendees |
| Maximum duration of live event | 4 hours | 4 hours |
| Maximum number of presenters and producers in a live event | 10 1 | 10 1 |
| Maximum number of concurrent live events per Microsoft 365 or Office 365 organization | 15 | 15 |
| Maximum audience size | 10,000 attendees | 10,000 attendees |
| Maximum duration of live event | 4 hours | 4 hours |
| Maximum number of presenters and producers in a live event | 10 1 | 10 1 |
| Maximum number of concurrent live events per Microsoft 365 or Office 365 organization | 15 | 15 |
| Live event creation | Teams, Yammer via Teams | Teams, Yammer via Teams, Stream |
| Audience engagement – Yammer | ✔ (integrated experience) | ✔ (integrated experience) |
| Audience engagement – Moderated Q & A | ✔ | ✔ |
| Producer client on Windows | ✔ (Teams) | ✔ (Stream, Teams via Stream Embed) |
| Producer client on Mac | ✔ (Teams) | ✔ (Stream, Teams via Stream Embed) |
| Attendee count in Producer UI | ✔ (Teams) | ✔ (Stream, Teams via Stream Embed) |
| Allows multiple presenters | ✔ (Teams) | N/A |
| Invite a presenter during the meeting | ❌ | N/A |
| Presenter join on Web and Mobile | ❌ | N/A |
| External access (federation) & Guest presenters/attendees | ✔ (Teams) | N/A |
| Presenter – PSTN access | ✔ (Teams) | N/A |
| Present a screen | ✔ (Teams) | N/A |
| Share system audio on Windows (available only when screen sharing) | ✔ (Teams) | ✔ |
| Present a PowerPoint (PPT sharing) | ❌ (mitigated via screen sharing) | N/A |
| Cloud based meeting recording | ✔ | ✔ |
| Auto publish recording to Stream | ❌ | ✔ |
| Live captions and subtitles | ✔ | ❌ |
| Captions in live event recordings | ✔ | ✔ |
| Attendee DVR controls (pause, rewind) | ✔ | ✔ |
| Partner eCDN Support | ✔ (Kollective, Hive) | ✔ (Hive, Kollective, Ramp) |
| Post-broadcast attendance report for Producers | ✔ | ❌ |
| Audience Sentiment Analysis – Live voting & polls | ❌ | ❌ |
You can have up to 250 presenters and producers in a live event, but only the last 10 who spoke will show up in the list.
Live events policy setup
Use Teams live events settings to configure settings for live events that are held in your organization. You can set up a support URL and configure a third-party video distribution provider. These settings apply to all live events that are created in your organization.
- Go to “Microsoft Teams admin center.“
- Select “Meetings.“
- Select “Live events policies.“
- Edit the “Global (Org-wide default) policy” or create a custom policy.
- Within the policy, you should have Allow scheduling enabled and depending on your needs, the specific audience Who can join scheduled live events configured.
- Next, make sure the policy is assigned to users by selecting Users in the teams admin center and checking what Assigned policies users have.
How do I schedule a MS Teams live event?
- In Teams, select Calendar > At the top of the scheduler, expand New meeting and Select live event.
- Add the meeting title, date and time information, and other details.
- In the Invite people to your event group box, add the names of your event group—the people who’ll be presenting and producing the event. The event group can consist of anyone inside or outside your organization. Just don’t invite attendees at this point—you’ll get a link to share with them later.
- Select Next.
- Under Live event permissions, choose who can attend your live event:
- Make selections under How do you plan to produce your event?
- If you’re producing in teams:
- Select Schedule to add the event to your and your event group’s calendars.
Note: Once the event is scheduled, be sure to make any changes to it in Teams. Don’t edit this event in Outlook.
Captions *
Live event attendees can view live captions and subtitles in up to six languages in addition to the spoken language. Presenters can select the six languages from a list of over 50.
Set up live captions and subtitles
To set up live captions and subtitles for your event, select the Captions box when you’re scheduling your event.
Note: Live captions and subtitles are only available for live events produced using Teams. Use the Translate to a Menu option to add up to six languages that attendees can choose for captions and subtitles in addition to the spoken language. For example, if the spoken language is English, but you know there’s an office in the Netherlands tuning in, select Dutch (Netherlands) so they can get captions in Dutch. A screenshot for reference is below.
Note: Supported spoken languages for this feature include English, German, and Chinese.
To get the most out of captions and subtitles, the presenters have to
- Speak clearly, slowly, and directly into the mic.
- Avoid locations with background noise.
- Avoid having multiple people speak at the same time.
Invite attendees to a teams live event
As a live event organizer, one of your responsibilities is inviting attendees. When you schedule a live event in Teams, it only sends the calendar invite to event team members.
- In Teams, select Calendar on the left side of the app.
- Select the live event.
- For events that’ll be produced in Teams, select Get attendees a link to copy the live event link so you can share it with attendees.
- Open your Outlook calendar and paste the link into a new invite.
- Don’t invite attendees via a teams meeting. A new teams meeting will have its own meeting link.
Produce a teams live event
- Select Calendar, then the live event, and Join.
- Queue on the left-hand side: This is your preview.
- Live event (on the right-hand side): This is what your attendees can see.
- You (bottom middle): This is where you can turn on or off your audio and video.
- Share (bottom right): This is where you can share content.
- Mute All (bottom right): This is where you can mute everyone.
- To share the desktop:
- Select Share > Desktop > Content > Send live.
- If the event hasn’t already started, select Start.
- To share a window:
- Select Share and select one of the open windows from the Windows section in the source tray.
- Once the window is shared, switch over to the producer UI.
- Select Content and then Send live.
- If the event hasn’t already started, select Start.
- Note: Do not minimize the selected window, as this would prevent a preview from showing in the queue.
- To share your video:
- Turn on your camera.
- Select your camera feed at the bottom of the screen to preview it in your queue (on the left) before sending it to the live event (on the right).
- Select Send live to send the feed from the preview to the live event.
- Select Start to start broadcasting live to your attendees!
- To end the event, select End -> Leave.
Present in a Teams Live Event
In the Teams client, open the invite and join the event as a presenter. When ready, share the video and/or desktop application as appropriate, using the same steps as a producer. As a presenter, you share many of the basic capabilities of a producer, but you don’t have as much control over the video feeds or the live event itself.
Microsoft Teams live event recording and reports
- In Teams, select Calendar on the left side of the app.
- Select and open the live event.
- Under Live event resources, you’ll have the option to download the
- Video recording.
- Attendees engagement report.
- Q&A report, etc.
- All of this will download into the downloads folder on your laptop.
Common issues and troubleshooting paths during the event
I can’t schedule a live event
The user should get access to schedule a live event. Access will be granted to the users based on the live event policy already in place.
I can’t join the meeting/live event
Identity: Do they need to be logged into the experience? Are they joining as an attendee instead of a producer, or vice versa?
Information: Do they have the right link for the right session at the proper time?
Device/Client: What browser or client are they using? Are they on mobile?
I can’t hear the presenter’s audio
Client Settings: Check their audio speaker settings. Are they on the correct device? If yes, test from outside of the meeting experience to ensure they are working for other apps. Is the volume adjusted properly?
I can’t turn on my video
Client Settings: Check their audio speaker settings. Are they on the correct device? If yes, test from outside of the meeting experience to ensure they are working for other apps. Is the volume adjusted properly?
Device: Have the video drivers been recently updated? Does the device need a restart?
I can’t see any slides, aka I can’t see the presenter’s content.
Speaker Sharing: Ensure the speaker is sharing their screen or the correct window into the meeting. Have the speaker re-share the content with the meeting.
That’s how MS Teams live events works.
Now I’d like to hear from you:
Which finding from today’s report did you find most interesting? Or maybe you have a question about something that I covered.
Either way, I’d like to hear from you. So go ahead and leave a comment below.
