Schedule a Microsoft Live Event from Microsoft Teams
- Go to your calendar in Microsoft Teams.
- In the top right corner of the screen, click on the drop-down arrow and select ‘Live event’.
3. You’ll now be presented with the live event set-up screen.
- Title: Give the live event a name
- Location: Add a physical location to the event
- Start and End: Set the date and time of the event
- Details: Provide details of the event for attendees
- Organizer: Choose if you’ll be the producer or presenter
- Presenters: Add any other colleagues who will be presenting by typing their name or email address
4. Click Next.
5. You’ll now be given the choice of attendee access permissions for your Teams live event.
- People and groups: If you select this, you will see a box where you can add a person by name or email address – or you can add an Office 365 group (ex. your Admin Team)
- Org-wide: This will enable anyone within your organization to join the event by signing in
- Public: This means anyone can join the live event – as long as they have a link to the event
NOTE: if the ‘Public’ option is greyed out, this is because it is switched off by default. You will need to enable the public option.
6. Below this, there are further options to choose from. The options are split into ‘Teams’ and ‘External app or device’. These instructions are using the Teams option. The external device option is for situations where you might be recording and presenting from a professional film set-up with an external encoder.
- Recording available to producers and presenters: This is automatically enabled
- Recording available to attendees: A recording of the event will be created for anyone that missed the event or for those who want to watch the event again later
- Captions: Text captions – the option to translate up to six languages
- Attendee engagement report: An engagement report which gives you information on the attendees
- Q&A: Ability for attendees to be able to ask questions to the presenters during the live event
7. Once you’ve selected the options you want. Click the ‘Schedule’ button.
8. The ‘Get attendee link’ button will copy a URL link to your clipboard, which you can then paste into anything from an email to an instant message – enabling you to share your link with potential attendees. Following the event, attendees will be able to watch the event again with the same link — but only if you ticked the ‘Recording available to attendees’ option during the event set up.
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9. If you decide to remove a person as a presenter, go into your calendar; click on your live event and then ‘Edit’.
10. You can remove the presenter and click ‘Update’ which will send them an email saying the event has been cancelled with the option to remove it from their calendar. You can also change them from a presenter to a producer.
Start your Microsoft Teams Live Event
If you have added presenters to your live event, they will receive an email invitation, as in the example below. They must accept the invitation and add it to their calendar.
NOTE: Anyone acting as a Presenter, MUST use the Teams desktop app. It doesn’t matter if it’s Windows or Mac, but you cannot present using the web app or mobile app.
- As the producer, you can now start the event. Go into your calendar and click on the live event. Click the ‘Join’ button to join the event.
NOTE: the event WILL NOT be live right away, this will just take you to the producer’s user interface where you can get your content ready before going live.
2. The producer’s screen is split into two separate windows with ‘Queue’ and ‘Live Event’. There is a yellow button stating ‘Pre-Live’ towards the top of the screen, which means the event isn’t live yet.
3. At this point, if any of your attendees were to join the event via the link, they would see the following screen.
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Adding content to the queue in Microsoft Teams Live Events
- On the producer’s screen, content can be added to the Queue. If a presenter has shared some content, you will see a small thumbnail image of their content at the bottom of the screen – which you can select. If you are both the producer and the presenter, click the ‘Share’ button and you will see all of the different windows you have open on your device. You can select any of these to share.
2. Select one and it will send it to the queue window. (If you’re on a laptop with a smaller screen, the window may crop some of the content so it appears as if some of the content is missing. Don’t worry, the content will display fully for attendees.)
3. If you want to share video of you or a presenter, next to the content, you can use the small button below the queue window to toggle between views (known as ‘Single source’ or ‘Content left’).
The ‘Content left’ layout appears like this, with the content on the left and a space for video on the right side of the window.
4. You can now select a video feed from yourself or one of your presenters and it will display next to the content in the queue.
5. Next, you’ll want to click the ‘Send live’ button which will add the content to the ‘Live event’ window too.
6. The event is not yet live, so next you’ll need to click the yellow ‘Start’ button.
7. This will bring up the following prompt. Click ‘Continue‘ and the event will be live for attendees.
8. You’ll know that you are live as you will see a red ‘Live’ button towards the top left corner of the screen — along with a red dot (recording), the event name, how long the event has been running and the numbers of attendees viewing the event.
9. Now that the event is live, your attendees will see the content live on their screen.
10. There will also be a red ‘End’ button under the live event window – which you will use to end the event once you are finished.
How to switch between content in Microsoft Teams Live Events
Switching between content isn’t quite as simple as you might expect. It’s very important that you rehearse and test, test, test before your live event to ensure that you’re comfortable with the functionality and how to switch between your content and presenter’s content.
If you’re sharing some content live, you can’t add multiple pieces of content to the queue at once. For example, if you were sharing a PowerPoint and wanted to switch to sharing an application like Dynamics 365, you would want to queue up the Dynamics 365 window in the queue and then send it live once you were finished with the PowerPoint deck.
However, you can’t do this. What you CAN do is:
- Click ‘Stop Sharing’. This will stop sharing your content and the attendees will see this screenshot below; while you find your next piece of content to share.
NOTE: if you were displaying your video next to your content using the ‘content left’ view, your video will then be shared full screen with attendees while you find the next piece of content to share.
2. You can then click ‘share’ again and pick the next piece of content will be live – so be aware of this.
3. OR If you are sharing content, you can queue your live video and then click ‘Send live‘ (will you are selecting your next piece of content to share). This creates a more seamless transition, without showing attendees ‘The live event will continue in a moment’ screen.
NOTE: When content is being shared during the live event, if a Producer or a Presenter clicks ‘share’ and selects some different content, this will be live and attendees will see the content. Again, do a rehearsal of your event beforehand and make sure each member of the teams knows the timings for actions such as sharing and when their video is going to be live.
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Q&A in Microsoft Teams Live Events
If you enabled a Q&A when creating your live event, the attendees will have the option to ask questions in the right-hand Q&A window. They can either post anonymously or add a name above their question.
When an attendee asks a question, you’ll see a small notification above the ‘Q&A’ icon in the menu bar in the top right of your screen.
- If you click on the icon, it will open your Live event Q&A window on the right of your screen.
2. You’ll see the new question(s) under the ‘New’ tab.
3. You can either send a private reply, or you can click ‘Publish’ which will make the question visible to all of the event attendees. If you choose to click ‘Dismiss’, the question will be parked into the ‘dismissed’ tab.
4. The questions you choose to publish will appear as ‘Featured’ questions to attendees. As you can see in the screenshot below, attendees can see featured questions as questions they have asked under the ‘My questions’ tab.
5. You can also use the button ‘Make an announcement’ to publish message to all attendees. This is useful if you want to say something along the lines of “Hi everyone, the event will be starting in around 5 minutes”.
What to do after the Teams live event has finished
- After the live event has finished, go back to your calendar in Teams and open up the live event calendar item.
- Once the pop-up window opens with the event details, scroll down and you’ll see ‘Live event resources’.
Here you can download:
- Recording: Video file of the live event
- Q&A report: A .csv file with record of questions asked, responses and identities
- Attendee engagement report: A .csv file with names of attendees and actions taken/roles
3. The final thing to do is to follow up with your attendees with any resources you want to share as a take-away and your call-to-action.
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