At the IT Assistance Center’s (ITAC) summer TXST Tech Talk, campus technology professionals had the chance to learn about Microsoft Teams Live, an extension of Microsoft Teams video meetings. It offers departments, faculty, and staff the opportunity to host live events with an audience of up to 10,000 participants. This could be very useful for some here at Texas State, so I wanted to share information about it.
What is Teams Live?
As you may know, Microsoft Teams is a chat-based collaboration platform complete with document sharing and online meetings. Teams Live is part of Teams, and allows people to hold events meant for large audiences with more control over video and audience interaction, such as moderated Q & A.
Advantages of Teams Live
- No extra license needed, simply schedule events directly from Microsoft Teams
- Up to 10,000 attendees can participate
- Invite attendees using a special link that can be emailed or posted on your site
- Allows you to set up a meeting title, date, time, and other details, as well as letting your invites know who will be presenting and producing the event
- Able to start early from the event’s scheduled time, and can go past the end time
- Choose who can attend your live event—specific people and groups, everyone at Texas State, or the public
- You can record your events and choose to have it available to only producers or to everyone, including attendees
- You can choose to have captions available, as well as up to six languages for translation
- Attendee engagement report allows you to see how many attended your event
- Choose to offer Q&A as a part of your event
See this video from Microsoft below which gives a great first-hand look at the experience of hosting an event with Teams Live.
Zoom Webinar or Microsoft Teams Live?
Zoom is a popular choice for many faculty and staff for holding classes and meetings online. Zoom Webinar is Zoom’s feature for hosting meetings intended for large online audiences. Which should you use? Check out the table below which explains the differences between Zoom Webinar and Microsoft Teams Live. You might also be interested in reading our blog post, Zoom or Teams? How to make the right choice, to get a better idea of the differences between the platforms themselves.
| Zoom Webinar | Teams Live |
| TXST faculty and staff would need to request a license from ITAC for Zoom Webinar, if they want to hold a meeting with more than 300 participants. | No need to request a license, the feature is available to everyone at TXST to create a Teams Live event with up to 10,000 participants. |
| Requests for license needs three to five business days for ITAC to process, and are first come first serve. They must be used within 48 hours. As long as you hold the temporary license, your meeting is guaranteed. | Only 15 Live events can be broadcast simultaneously at TXST, and is also first come first serve. For example, if a 16th person tries to host a Live event while 15 are already being held, they won’t be able to host their meeting. |
| Participant interactions are managed by Host and Panelists. | Producers and Presenters manage interactions and sharing for Attendees. |
| Organizer may send event registration with email reminders. | Attendees can be invited using a special link that can be emailed or posted on a site. |
ITAC’s Tech Talk brought together IT Division and campus technology professionals across Texas State University. These sessions offer a place for staff to learn about tech services, network, and share information and resources. You may be interested in also reading about another Tech Talk session which gave best practices for working remotely and securely.
Chantal Lesley is a marketing and communications specialist student employee in the IT Marketing and Communications office.
