Microsoft Teams Gets New Town Halls Experience, Retires Teams Live Events

Key Takeaways:

• Microsoft Teams is getting a new Town Halls feature that will let users host internal and external events. The new virtual events experience offers support for up to 10,000 participants, co-organizers, eCDN support, green rooms, and attendee reporting.
• Microsoft Teams Premium customers benefit from several advanced capabilities, including support for 50 concurrent events, up to 20,000 attendees, and AI-generated live transcription.
• Microsoft Teams Town Halls, launching on October 5, will replace the existing Teams Live Events functionality.

Microsoft Teams continues to improve the meeting experience, and starting next month the collaboration platform is getting a new Town Halls feature with support for up to 10,000 attendees. The new virtual event experience will replace the Teams Live Events functionality, which is set to retire on September 30, 2024.

With Town Halls, commercial customers will be able to host and deliver different types of internal and external events. These include fireside chats, internal broadcasts, global team meetings, all hands, company-wide town halls, and more. Organizers will have access to advanced production features and a streamlined process for engaging attendees.

“Town halls in Microsoft Teams enable customers to extend their reach to scale their message and connect with audiences around the world; create professionally produced, studio-quality events that deliver a more dynamic experience; and structure and manage audience engagement to maximize participation and maintain focus on the event,” Microsoft explained.

What’s new in Microsoft Teams Town Halls

According to Microsoft, the Town Halls feature will provide several basic capabilities for Microsoft 365 and Office 365 E1/E3/E5/A3/A5 customers. The new virtual event experience supports 10,000 participants, co-organizers, as well as automated invitation and event recording emails.

In Microsoft Teams, Town Halls will also support hosting up to 15 concurrent events across a tenant. Other capabilities include eCDN support, green rooms, RTMP-in/out, on-demand recordings, AI-generated Live transcription, Live translation captions, and attendee reporting.

Microsoft Teams Premium customers will have access to some advanced features, including support for up to 20,000 attendees, up to 50 concurrent events, and Microsoft eCDN. There is also the ability to host virtual events for up to 30 hours.

Microsoft Teams Live Events retirement

Microsoft also announced its plans to retire Teams Live events for commercial customers on September 30, 2024. This means that users won’t be able to schedule, start, or join Teams Live Events beyond this date. Microsoft recommends customers to download and upload their existing recordings to a different location before December 31, 2024.

Microsoft Teams Town Halls will become generally available for commercial customers on October 5. The feature will be enabled by default for all end users, and it will be up to the IT admins to disable it in their tenants via PowerShell commands.