Switch from Microsoft Teams live events to town halls

Important: 

  • Teams live events will no longer be going away on September 30, 2024, as previously announced. While we still recommend switching to Teams town halls for new features and experiences, you can now schedule live events beyond September 2024.

  • For more information, please read this blog post for more information.

Whether you’re organizing a company-wide review, or meeting with clients, town halls are optimized for delivering high-quality, produced events to large and small audiences.

Town hall vs. live events

Town halls have many of the same capabilities as live events, as well as new advanced features, that can help you organize high-quality, large-scale events.  

Live events

Town halls

Town halls (Teams Premium)

Capacity

10k

10k

20k

Concurrent events

15

15

50

Duration

4 hours

30 hours

30 hours

Attendee reporting

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RTMP-in

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Q&A

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On-demand recording

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Green room 

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Attendee experience

Just like in live events, town hall attendees can watch presenters and participate in Q&A. To minimize distractions and keep focus on the event, attendees won’t be able to turn on their mics or cameras, or chat with other attendees.

Email communications

Town hall attendees automatically receive email invites when an organizer creates the event and emails with a link to the event recording if it’s published. In Teams Premium, organizers can edit town hall emails with customized details. To learn more, see Schedule a town hall in Microsoft Teams.

Live translated captions

Live translated captions allow users to see captions translated into the language they’re most comfortable with.

In live events, attendees can choose to see live translated captions in one of six different languages that are pre-selected by the event organizer. 

In town halls, attendees can choose to see live translated captions in one of the languages preselected by the organizer. Attendees will be able to choose from six different languages, or ten if the organizer has Teams Premium. 

Event roles

In live events, there are organizer, producer, presenter, and attendee roles. In town halls, there are organizer, co-organizer, presenter, and attendee roles.

The producer role in live events will be replaced by the organizer, co-organizer, and presenter roles in town hall because these roles will have similar functionality to the producer role. They’ll be able to start and stop the event, share their own video and content, share external video, and choose which presenters and content are featured on screen with Manage what attendees see in Teams Premium.

Related topics

Get started with town hall

Schedule a town hall

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