Intro

This is a very quick and crude look at using Microsoft Teams Live Events which has just been released into public preview. You can learn more from the official Microsoft documentation here.

Schedule a Live Event

Live Events are created in the same way that you create a standard meeting within Microsoft Teams. When you open the meeting composer, user the dropdown menu at the top left to choose a “New live event”:

Create the event and invite participants who fill the “Producer” or “Presenter” roles within the meeting:

Configure the Live Event by choosing the permissions and production type:

Here we have a scheduled Live Event:

The invited “Event Group” will receive an Outlook invite, which also includes an option to dial in via the PSTN:

It doesn’t look as though you can invite external participants directly from Microsoft Teams, but the above-mentioned invite that is created in Outlook could be used. I didn’t spend much time on this so unsure what Microsoft’s intentions are. Once I figure that out I will try and remember to update this comment 🙂

The Live Event will also create a group conversation with the “Event Group” participants you added. This could be useful to discuss things prior to the event:

Join a Live Event

Here we are about to join the meeting. Much like a standard meeting, we can configure audio/video and devices. You can also select to join as an attendee rather than your assigned Event Group role of “Presenter” or “Producer”:

Once you have joined, in my case as a producer, you can setup the content that you want to share (left-hand side – pre-live), then make it live (right-hand side):

If you enabled Q&A, you can access this from the top right. Here you can view and answer questions coming in from the participants, or make announcements:

When you Join as a participant via the web you have the option to sign-in or join anonymously. In the following example I am going to be joining anonymously:

Here’s the anonymous participant’s web experience. They see the content on the left, and have the ability to participate in the Q&A on the right:

Ending a Live Event

Once the meeting is ended it cannot be started again so be careful with that 🙂

External Encoder

For the professionals out there, external encoder support is coming soon (later in August). This will allow you to input external sources into the Live Event.

“External encoders allow users to produce their live events directly from an external hardware or software-based encoder with Microsoft Stream. This option is best if you already have studio quality equipment (e.g. media mixers) which support streaming to an RTMP service. This option is typically used in large scale events such as executive town halls – where a single stream from a media mixer is broadcast to the audience.”

Performance

Its early days and this is a preview, but I did notice my PC was under huge load when running the Live Event. My PC is fairly powerful so there might be some work required there:

Summary

A pretty cool experience for running semi-professional and professional live events. While it’s early days, it looks like they are really building on SfB Broadcast Meetings, and making the user experience much nicer. External encoder support will be a biggy for the pro’s out there. Have a play and let me know what you think.