Information Services

Teams Town Halls

For large audience events online, Microsoft are introducing Town Halls to replace Live Events on Teams from end of September 2024.

Introducing Teams Town Halls

Town Halls will provide a new way of hosting and delivering large-scale online events, simplifying the overall experience for users with its integration onto the more familiar Teams platform (that Live Events was not built on).

What’s happening?

Microsoft are ending support for Teams Live Events from September 2024.  All new features released will now port to Town Halls.  Town Halls are available for scheduling large events through Teams, and we recommend Live Event organisers familiarise and seek to use it for future events now.

What are the differences?

Many features have already been adopted in Teams Live Events, including maximum 10,000 attendees, but others, as seen in the box below, provide exciting opportunities for hosts and attendees alike. 

Feature Teams Live Events Teams Town Halls
Maximum duration 4 hours 30 hours
Manage what attendees can see (including Q&A) No Yes
Essential emails* No Yes
Live caption translation One of six languages chosen by the host One of six languages chosen by each attendee
Layout** Single Video, Video + Content Dynamic focused curated view

*Pre-configured, rather than manually-created, emails sent by the organiser for the event invitation and recordings.

**Unlike Live Events limitations of layout, Town Halls will automatically optimise the layout for the audience automatically, based on the content and video feeds on screen.

Frequently Asked Questions

What do the new roles mean?

In Live Events, there are organisers, producers, presenters, and attendees, in comparison to Town Halls, where there are organisers, co-organisers, presenters, and attendees.

The Live Events producer role is to be divided up into the organiser, co-organiser, and presenter roles in Town Halls.

More about the event roles

What will happen to my Live Event recordings after it is retired?

Live event recordings will be retained until 31st December 2024. If you will need access to your recordings after this date, download them and upload them to another location.

What will happen to my pre-planned Live Events?

Microsoft will end support for Live Events from 30th September 2024. If you are planning to host an event, only host your event on Live Events if it finishes before this date. You have access to schedule Town Hall meetings now and we recommend that you familiarise with it now and use it to host your large events which pre-dates 30th September 2024. 

For Organisers

For Hosts

For Presenters

For Attendees

Help & Feedback

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