How to set up and attend live events in Microsoft Teams

Table of Contents

1. Plan and schedule a live event

Microsoft Teams live events is an important extension of Teams meetings. This enables the users to produce events for large audiences who are online. It provides more control over the video, audience interaction, and the detailed reporting.

Here is how you can plan and schedule a live event:

Go the top of Teams dialog box, then select New meeting>New live event.
Add your meeting title, time and date information, and other details as well.
In the box of “Invite people to your event group”, add the names of the audience whom you want to present and produce the event.
Now, select Next.
Under the Live event permissions, select who can attend the live event.
You can also make your selections under “How do you plan to produce your event?”
Hit Schedule.
Choose the “Get attendee link” to copy the given unique code. This is the link, which you post or send to the users who will be attending your event.
If you want to create a live event in Microsoft Teams, choose Meetings on the left side of your application then select New meeting.

Note: Once you have scheduled your event, make sure to make any changes in Teams application only. Do not do an editing of this event in your Outlook.

2. Produce a live event

Before you go live in Microsoft Team, make sure you get all things set up with your live event. The producer’s screen has three primary areas. What is live is appears on the right side of the app. On the left side, the Queue indicates you what is next. Lastly, the bottom tray has all the important content, which you can share.

How to highlight bottom tray?

First, select Calendar, then choose the live event, and then Join.

Note: You can only join the event as a producer in MS Teams if you are the organizer or you have been assigned this particular role.

If you want to share your desktop or any window, choose Shareand add the content, which you prefer to share.
Now choose what content you want to show to your audience from at the bottom of your screen to preview it in the queue (on the left side) before you send it to what is live (available on the right side).
Choose Send live to move the feed from your preview queue to live.
Now, select Start if you want to start broadcasting.

3. Attend a live event

Attending the live event means, you can watch live events of Microsoft Team on-demand.

How to attend or watch a live event?

First, you have to select the live event link.
Here, you will see some different instructions, which are based on how you can join the event (e.g. from the Teams application or from the web).
Now, sign in or you can select Join anonymously.

Here, you will see the message “The live event has not yet started,” If the live event has not started.

There are controls available at the bottom of you r Teams screen, using that you can pause the action, adjust the volume and video quality as well.
If you want to watch the event again, you can use the same link to see the recording.

How to participate in a live event?

The Q&A panel appears only if the organizers have set it up. To ask a question, you can follow these steps:

Select Q&A, which is available on the right side of your screen.
Here, you can type your question using the compose box, and then select Send to ask your question.
Select Ask anonymously, If you prefer to ask your queries anonymously,

4. Moderating a Q&A

Whenever a live event is created along with the Q&A option, all the attendees can ask questions before the event starts. All these questions are only visible to the moderators, until they publish them to the Teams event.

Choose Q&A on the right side of your screen, then select Open.
Now, select Publish if you want to make your question and answer visible to the audience.
You can also choose a question and select “Private reply” to reply.
You answer will be instantly available to the user who asked the particular question.
All the producers and attendees can like the questions by clicking on the thumb icon.
If you want to say something to all attendees in chat, you can type an announcement, which is available at the bottom of the panel and then select Send.
Now when your event is finished, you can download all the reports including a Q&A. Select the menu button available on the live event invite and you are all set.