The Powerful Tips To Use The Live Event In Teams

Techieberry

7 min readJan 19, 2021

The ultimate tips to show you the use of the live event in teams.

Before I get started, here are a couple of things you can do:

We have written the tutorial to setup breakout rooms in Microsoft 365 Teams to split your meetings.
We have also written posts to improve your Microsoft 365 Teams experience for better productivity. Check out the tips and tricks mentioned here.

Let’s jump right in.

What is a live event in teams?

Microsoft Teams Live Events is designed to broadcast to up to 10,000 attendees and is a more difficult tool which ideally requires formal training. If you are organising a meeting with less 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 to large groups can accommodate large numbers of up to 10,000 participants.

Enable live events in teams

Once Teams is enabled, you need to setup live events. To do this,

Go to “Microsoft 365 admin center“
Select “Teams” from admin centers
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 on teams admin center and checking what Assigned policies users have.

How to create a live event in teams?

Live event in teams is an extension of Teams Meetings, that enable you to schedule, produce and broadcast events to large audiences online. If you are the organizer of a live event, you can schedule it in Teams in a similar way to how you schedule a regular Teams meeting. This process will add the live event to you and your production group’s calendars. After that, you’ll need to invite the attendees.

In Teams, select Calendar and then New meeting
At the top of the scheduler, select New meeting > New 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 org. 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:

If you’re using an external app or device, the option is greyed out.

Select Schedule to add the event to your and your event group’s calendars.

How to invite attendees?

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 link to copy the live event link so you can share it with attendees
Open your Outlook calendar and past the link into a new invite
Don’t invite attendees via a Teams meeting. A new Teams meeting will have its own meeting link

How to produce your live event in teams?

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): Is what your attendees can see
You (bottom middle): is where you can turn on of off your audio and video
Share (bottom right): Is where you can share content
Mute All (bottom right): 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 preview to the live event.
Select Start to start broadcasting live to your attendees.
To end the event, select End -> Leave

Teams live event producer vs presenter

Live Events generally have several people working behind the scenes in a Production Group.

The Production Group

The production groups consist of an organiser, producer and presenters.

The Organizer

The organiser schedules a Live Event in teams and ensures the event is set up with the right permissions for attendees and the production group, who will manage the event. Organisers are responsible for:

Creating a live event
Setting attendee permissions
Selecting a production method
Configuring event options (for example, the moderated Q&A)
Inviting attendees
Selecting production group members
Managing reports generated after the event is over

Note: The organizer role is flexible and the organizer can also nominate themselves as a producer or presenter.

The Producer

A producer makes sure attendees have a great viewing experience by controlling the Live Event stream. Producers are responsible for:

Starting and stopping the Live Event
Sharing own video
Sharing participant video
Sharing desktop or window (e.g. PPT slides)
Selecting layouts

The Presenter

Presenters can be responsible for:

Presenting audio and video
Moderating the Q&A

Note: Presenters can only share audio, video or a screen (desktop or window) in the live event in teams.

To know the differences between a Producer and a Presenter, click here.

Teams live event recording

In Teams, select Calendar on the left side of the app
Select 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 are downloaded into the downloads folder on your computer

Attend a live event in teams

Open the live event link, to join the event.
If you open the event from Teams, you’ll join the event in Teams.
Note: Live events don’t use your Microsoft Teams device preferences yet. Use your operating system sound setting to choose your speaker for the live event.
If you open the event from Outlook, you can join from the web or open the event in Teams.
If the live event hasn’t started, you’ll see the message “The live event has not yet started“
Browser — If you’re attending the live event on the web, use a media-source extension(MSE)-enabled web browser like Chrome, Firefox, or Edge. Safari is not currently supported.
Video Resolution — If the live event in teams begins in low resolution, you might need to manually reset it to a higher resolution.

Watch the live event later
Once the live event is over, you can still watch the recording using the same link, if the organizer chose to make the recording available.

Teams live event q&a

When a live event is created with a Q&A option, the Q&A is open by default and attendees can start asking questions even if the event hasn’t started. These questions are only visible to moderators until they publish them to the event.

Open or close the Q&A

To display or hide the Q&A panel, click the Q&A button on the top right side of the screen.
Once the Q&A panel is open you can toggle the Open/Close switch turn the Q&A function off and on.

Answer Questions

Questions from attendees will appear in the Q&A panel, by default they are private and not seen by other participants.

Select a question you want to answer by clicking on it and type in your answer. Questions are private by default.
Click the Publish button to answer publicly.
Click the Send button to answer privately.

Make announcements

To make announcements through the Q&A function follow the below steps.

Click the Make an Announcement button at the bottom of the Q&A panel
Type in your announcement and click the Send button
Click the Send button

Export reports

You can export the transcript, attendee list and Q&A report from a live event using the following steps.

Launch “Teams Admin Center“
Select “Analytics & Reports“
Select “Usage Reports“
Report = Teams live event usage
Date Range = 7 days
Click “Run report”
Select the live event
Click on the links to download the report — Transcript, Attendee and Q & A report