Upgrade to Teams Town hall
Since the general availability of Teams town hall in October 2023, we continue to bring more features from Teams Live Events along with new functionality into the new town hall experience. Town hall will continue to be the platform where our new features and value land, and we encourage Teams Live Events users to take advantage of these new innovations by upgrading to town hall when ready. Below is what is already available and what is still coming, and we will update this list as more features become available. For additional details on specific features and timing, please refer to the Microsoft 365 Public Roadmap.
Features generally available
Scale
- Enable event naming on reporting with 3P eCDN providers
- Concurrent attendee increase to 50,000 (premium)
- Microsoft eCDN and third-party eCDN support
- GCC, GCC-High
IT Admin controls
- Separate transcription policies
- Separate recording policies
Devices integration
- Join and present from Teams Rooms on Windows
- Microsoft Teams Room devices support
Extensibility
- SharePoint embedGraph APIs
Advanced broadcast & streaming
- Automatic installation and update of the Network Device Interface (NDI) in Teams (Windows Only)
- Add support for streaming playback on other devices outside of system default
- Download transcription and view RTMP-in
Management controls
- Virtual event templates and scheduling forms
- Support for external email automation software
Host and scene controls
- End the session for attendees and presenters, return to green room
- Control shared content in ‘Manage what attendees see’ before sending it live
- Post and reply to questions as an organizer
- Allow presenters to moderate Q&A
- Back-stage private chat for presenters and organizers
- Simplified event creation by duplicating town hall events
- Select language for translation (premium)
- Microsoft Purview support
- Co-organizer updates
- Attendee reporting
- Intelligent meeting recap (Premium)
- On-demand recording
- Block attendee emails
Interactivity
- DVR (Digital Video Recording) support
- 20k attendees with Q&A
- Live translated captions
- Join link for external presenter
- Q&A: Red dot indicator for new questions and replies
- Export Q&A Questions
- Private moderator reply in Q&A
- Chat for organizers and presenters
- Streaming event chat (premium)
- Reactions (premium)
Attendee engagement and interactivity
(i.e. captions, translation, embed, engagement/interactivity, DVR)
- Digital Video Recording (DVR) support for Town hall
- 20,000 attendees with Q&A
- Reactions (Premium)
- Live translated captionsJoin link for external presenter
What’s coming in Q2
- Microsoft Teams Rooms capabilities
- Increased policy controls
- Cloud Video Interop (CVI) support
- Concurrent attendee increase to 100,000 (premium)Ultra-low latency (ULL) attendee experience (premium)
- Polls support (premium)
- Towns hall in DoD
- Webinars in DoD
- DVR (Digital Video Recording) capabilities in iOs and Android
- New IT administrator policies
- Ability to separate out the Town hall attendee invite
- Join as attendees from Teams Rooms on Windows
- Organizer and Co-organizers can join as attendees
- Add a presenter from the participant roster
- Usage reports in Team Admin Center
- Preview changes before sending live in ‘Manage what attendees see’
- Specify who can manage the screen
- Post and reply to questions as an organizer
- Presenters join via dial-in
- Use PSTN code to join a town hall or webinar
- Separate out Town hall attendee invites
Support for Business Users
Check out the resources below to find out how to get started on setting up and delivering your organization’s town hall, all hands, global team event, and more!
Need additional support? The Microsoft 365 Live Event Assistance Program (LEAP) can help provide guidance and best practices for delivering a successful event.
Support for IT Pros
Read through our resources below to ensure your organization is ready to begin using town halls, including verifying your event policies and managing who is able to schedule and set up town halls within your organization.
