With all the challenges we are facing with the COVID-19 almost all User Group Meetings and other meetings have now gone virtual.

One of the features within Microsoft Teams is that you can create and host a Live Event.

In this blog post I am going to cover how to configure and set this up “Events produced by Teams”. I am by no means a Microsoft Teams expert but I do think that this can help a lot of people who organize meetings to have the capability to host them quickly, easily and if you have got an Office 365 subscription it will cost you maybe some internet bandwidth (I am assuming that you have got Teams Licesnes)

What is a Live Event, here is a brief overview below?

Source: Teams live events and Skype Meeting Broadcast

Configuring Teams for a Live Event

The first step is I had to configure Teams for a Live Event. To do this I followed the steps in the Microsoft Docs.

NOTE: I am an Office 365 Admin tenant which gives me the permissions to do this.

  • I logged into my Office 365 Admin Portal.
  • I then went into my Teams Admin Center
  • I then went to Meetings, expanded Meetings and clicked on Live Event Policies
  • On the right-hand side, I clicked on my Global (Org-Wide Default)
  • I then changed the “Who can join scheduled live events” to Everyone, this will allow anyone (public) to be able to connect to the live event.
  • I then clicked Save
  • Another note is if you want to assign live events policies to users you can use this link here: Assign a live events policy to users

I now had applied the policy which allowed me to schedule Live Events where the public can join.

Note: This policy setting took roughly 2 hours to take effect in my tenant. It could possibly take up to 24 hours to take effect. Please, be aware of this and test this feature long before your actual live event.

Scheduling a Live Event

Now I was ready to create and schedule my Live Event, which I did in the steps below.

NOTE: When I looked at the documentation it was different to how it is done today. And quite likely it will be different in the future!

  • I logged into my Teams application.
  • I then clicked on Calendar
  • On the right-hand side, I clicked on the drop down next to New meeting and selected Live event
  • On the new live event screen, I put in the details required.
  • Below are the details for an Organizer, Producer or Presenter
  • I then clicked Next
  • On the Live Event Permissions page, I configured it as a Public event.
    • I also set the options below as per my Live event requirements, which were
      • Recording available to attendees (This will be available after the meeting)
      • Attendee engagement report
      • Q&A to allow the attendees to ask questions which can be answered via the Q&A functionality.
  • I was now happy with this live event and I clicked on Schedule
  • Once created I was presented with the Details of the Live Event and the option to now share the link
  • I could then see the Live Event in my Teams Calendar
    • And if need be, I can then edit the event to make changes to the Live Event and if required the settings.

Note: When you start an event, you will not be able to stop the event then restart the event. Once the event is live you must let it run.

Note: All teams live events are limited to a 4-hour window of time. ( https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/teams-live-events/plan-for-teams-live-events )

Note: Follow this link for other best practices ( https://support.office.com/en-us/article/best-practices-for-producing-a-teams-live-event-e500370e-4dd1-4187-8b48-af10ef02cf42 )

Bonus Tip: I recommend that you provide some additional time before and after your meeting. If your meeting is an hour long, add 30 minutes before. Also consider adding an additional 30 mins or 1 hour after your meeting to allow it to run over on time.

Summary

Whilst this is certainly not a comprehensive way to create a Teams Live Event, I do think that this will assist people in creating a live event which will assist them to be able to host their monthly user groups.

A special thanks to Mike Carlo for making sure I got the details right for this blog post.

I do hope that this blog post will be well received and allow people to still share and give of their time, even if it is online.

As I say every time please let me know if there is anything I have left out or if there any comments.