EP 05 Teams Premium Webinars and Town Halls [Teams Premium Masterclass]

Summary

In this informative session, Mark delves into Microsoft Teams' premium features for webinars and town halls, highlighting the admin portal's role in configuring policies. He explains the capacity increase to 20,000 participants for premium town halls and the advanced customization options, including custom backgrounds and end-to-end encryption. Mark also discusses the importance of bandwidth management for large-scale events, introducing Microsoft eCDN as a solution to reduce bandwidth requirements through peer-to-peer video sharing. This feature ensures a smooth experience for large audiences, making Teams Premium an invaluable asset for organizations running high-impact events.

Takeaways

• 😀 Teams Premium offers enhanced customization and additional features for running events within Microsoft Teams.
• 🎥 The base licensing for Microsoft Teams includes different types of meetings such as regular meetings, webinars, town halls, and Teams Live Events.
• 📈 Teams Premium increases the capacity for town halls from 10,000 to 20,000 participants, allowing for larger scale events.
• 🌟 Premium features for webinars and town halls include custom backgrounds and end-to-end encryption, enhancing the security and personalization of events.
• 👀 As a moderator or organizer, you can manage and curate what attendees see during a Teams webinar, selecting different feeds to present on screen.
• 📹 RTMP (Real-Time Messaging Protocol) allows for the integration of professional video equipment to stream into Teams meetings, broadening the scope of content that can be shared.
• 📚 The organizer of a webinar or town hall needs to have the Teams Premium license for attendees to benefit from the premium features, regardless of their own licenses.
• 📧 Teams allows for the creation of webinars with features such as presenter bios, custom themes, registration, and automated reminder emails.
• 🔍 For efficient webinars, it's recommended that presenters have appropriate bandwidth and high-quality cameras to ensure a good experience for attendees.
• 🌐 Microsoft eCDN (Enterprise Content Delivery Network) can be used to reduce bandwidth requirements by enabling peer-to-peer video sharing within the corporate network.
• 🛡️ eCDN is included with Teams Premium and can be configured to control which clients share video streams, optimizing large-scale event delivery without overloading bandwidth.

Q & A

What is the main focus of the section where Mark is explaining Teams Premium customization options?

The main focus is to help understand Teams Premium webinars and town halls, and to guide through the admin portal for configuring policies and settings required for these events.

What are the different types of meetings included in the base licensing for Microsoft Teams?

The base licensing for Microsoft Teams includes meetings, webinars, town halls, and Teams Live Events.

How does Teams Premium enhance the capabilities of town halls?

Teams Premium enhances town halls by increasing the participant capacity from the default 10,000 to up to 20,000 participants.

What is one of the premium features introduced for webinars and town halls in Teams Premium?

One of the premium features is the ability to curate what attendees see during the event, such as custom backgrounds and end-to-end encryption.

How does the Teams client allow for the management of what attendees see during a webinar?

The Teams client allows moderators or organizers to pick and choose what is presented on screen at any given time, such as content alongside a video or multiple video streams.

What is RTMP and how does it relate to Teams webinars?

RTMP stands for Real-Time Messaging Protocol, and it allows for custom or professional-style video equipment to provide a video stream into the meeting, enhancing the webinar experience.

What is required for attendees to benefit from the premium capabilities of webinars and town halls in Teams?

Only the meeting organizer needs to be licensed with the premium feature for all attendees to benefit from the enhanced capabilities.

What is the role of presenter bios in creating a webinar in Teams?

Presenter bios provide information about the individuals presenting in the webinar, which can be included as part of the event creation process in Teams.

How can reminder emails be configured for a webinar in Teams?

Reminder emails can be configured to go out to attendees on a specified basis, either before or after the event, and can include details such as sharing recordings.

What is Microsoft eCDN and how does it optimize events in Teams?

Microsoft eCDN is a service that reduces bandwidth requirements by enabling the Teams client to act as a peer-to-peer video sharing network, distributing video streams internally and reducing the load on the internet gateway.

Which types of events in Teams are supported by eCDN?

Teams Town Hall, Teams Live Event, and events hosted in FEVER Engage are all supported by eCDN to help optimize the events.

Outlines

00:00

📚 Introduction to Teams Premium Webinars and Town Halls

In this segment, Mark introduces the advanced features of Microsoft Teams Premium, focusing on webinars and town halls. He guides viewers through the admin portal to demonstrate how to set up policies and configurations necessary for these events. Mark explains the difference between standard and premium capabilities, highlighting the increased capacity for town halls from 10,000 to 20,000 participants in Teams Premium. He also discusses additional features like custom backgrounds, end-to-end encryption, and the ability to curate attendee views during live events. Mark emphasizes the importance of these features for creating engaging and controlled experiences for attendees.

05:03

🎥 Configuring and Optimizing Webinars in Teams Premium

This paragraph delves into the process of creating and configuring webinars within Microsoft Teams. It covers setting up presenter bios, custom themes, registration, and reminder emails. The speaker discusses the importance of ensuring a high-quality user experience by providing recommendations for presenters, such as checking bandwidth and camera quality. Additionally, the paragraph introduces Microsoft eCDN, a feature included in Teams Premium that optimizes bandwidth usage by allowing the Teams client to distribute video streams internally, reducing the load on the corporate network. This is particularly beneficial for large organizations with many users consuming events simultaneously, as it significantly reduces the bandwidth requirements and ensures a smoother streaming experience.

10:04

🌐 The Role of eCDN in Enhancing Teams Events

The final paragraph discusses the role of Microsoft eCDN in enhancing the delivery of Teams events, such as Town Halls and Live Events. eCDN operates as a peer-to-peer video sharing feature that reduces the bandwidth requirement on the internet gateway by allowing clients to share video feeds with each other. The speaker explains that this feature is crucial for large-scale events, where bandwidth consumption can become a challenge without eCDN. The paragraph also touches on the configurability of eCDN, allowing administrators to control which clients can peer with each other, ensuring that, for example, office-based clients do not peer with those on a VPN subnet. The integration of eCDN as a first-party offering in the Teams client is highlighted, emphasizing its importance in optimizing large-scale events.

Keywords

💡Teams Premium

Teams Premium refers to an enhanced version of Microsoft Teams that offers additional features and capabilities beyond the standard version. It is central to the video's theme as it discusses the advanced customization options and event functionalities available with this premium service. For instance, the script mentions increased capacity for town halls and additional features like custom backgrounds and end-to-end encryption as part of the premium package.

💡Webinars

A webinar is an online seminar or interactive workshop that allows participants to learn or discuss a topic remotely. In the context of the video, webinars are one of the event types that Microsoft Teams supports, with Teams Premium offering additional features to enhance the webinar experience. The script discusses how Teams Premium introduces the ability to curate attendee views and manage presentations more effectively during webinars.

💡Town Halls

Town Halls in Microsoft Teams are large-scale virtual meetings designed for communication to a broad audience, similar to a public meeting or assembly. The script highlights that Teams Premium increases the default capacity of town halls from 10,000 to 20,000 participants, emphasizing the scalability and suitability of Teams Premium for large organizational events.

💡Live Events

Live Events in Microsoft Teams are a feature that allows for the broadcasting of meetings to a large, remote audience. The script mentions Live Events as another type of event that can benefit from Teams Premium features, although the specific enhancements are not detailed in the provided transcript.

💡Capacity

In the context of the video, capacity refers to the maximum number of participants that can join a Teams meeting, webinar, town hall, or live event. The script explains that Teams Premium significantly increases the capacity for town halls, allowing for up to 20,000 participants, which is a key selling point for organizations needing to host large-scale events.

💡Customization

Customization in Microsoft Teams involves personalizing the appearance and functionality of meetings and events to fit an organization's brand or preferences. The script discusses Teams Premium's premium customization options, such as custom themes and backgrounds, which allow for a more tailored experience during webinars and town halls.

💡Moderator

A moderator in the context of Teams webinars and town halls is an individual responsible for managing the event, including who and what is presented on screen. The script describes the moderator's ability to select and send live feeds, controlling the attendee's view, which is a crucial aspect of curating the event experience in Teams Premium.

💡RTMP

RTMP, or Real-Time Messaging Protocol, is a protocol for streaming audio, video, and data over the internet. The script mentions the capability of Teams Premium to ingest RTMP streams, allowing for professional video equipment to broadcast directly into meetings, enhancing the production quality of webinars and town halls.

💡eCDN

eCDN, or enterprise Content Delivery Network, is a service that optimizes the delivery of content within an organization's network to reduce bandwidth usage and improve streaming quality. The script discusses how Microsoft eCDN, included in Teams Premium, allows for peer-to-peer video sharing, significantly reducing bandwidth requirements for large-scale events, which is essential for organizations with many users consuming events simultaneously.

💡Bandwidth

Bandwidth in this video refers to the data transfer capacity required for streaming video content during Teams events. The script explains that without eCDN, large events can strain an organization's bandwidth, but with eCDN enabled, bandwidth requirements are reduced through peer-to-peer sharing of video streams, ensuring a smoother event experience for all participants.

💡Templates

Templates in Microsoft Teams are pre-configured settings for meetings that can include themes, layouts, and other elements to streamline the setup process. The script mentions meeting templates as part of the customization options available in Teams, which can be utilized to quickly set up webinars and town halls with consistent branding and formatting.

Highlights

Mark explains Teams Premium's customization options and how to configure policies for webinars and town halls.

Different types of meetings in Microsoft Teams, including webinars, town halls, and Teams Live Events.

Teams Premium enhances capabilities such as increasing the default capacity of town halls from 10,000 to 20,000 participants.

Premium features include custom backgrounds and end-to-end encryption for meetings.

Webinars allow for real-time curation of what attendees see, with the ability to manage multiple video streams.

RTMP support in webinars enables the use of professional video equipment for high-quality streaming.

Only the meeting organizer needs a Teams Premium license for webinars and town halls to function.

Creating a webinar involves setting presenter bios, custom themes, registration, and reminder emails.

Recommendations for ensuring a high-quality user experience in webinars, including bandwidth and camera quality.

Microsoft eCDN can be used to reduce bandwidth requirements for large-scale events.

eCDN operates as a peer-to-peer network to share video streams within an organization.

Control over eCDN policies allows organizations to manage which clients peer with each other.

Teams Town Hall, Live Events, and events hosted in Fever Engage are all supported by eCDN.

The importance of bandwidth management for organizations with thousands of users consuming events simultaneously.

eCDN as a first-party offering included natively in the Teams client for optimized video sharing.

The practical application of eCDN in reducing the bandwidth strain on internet gateways for large events.

Transcripts

in the last section Mark explained us

the teams premium customization options

in this part mark is going to help us

understand the teams premium webinars

and town halls and Mark is going to take

us through the admin portal walk through

on how to configure these policies and

configurations required for webinars and

town halls and I hope you are really

going to enjoy this section let's go and

find out how so we're going to switch

years now uh and talk a little bit about

um uh running events inside of Microsoft

teams uh and some of the capabilities

and uh additional features that you get

with teams premium so when we're talking

about um meetings uh specifically uh

there are a couple of different types uh

that you've got included in your base

licensing for Microsoft teams you've got

meetings webinars uh town halls and for

for a little bit longer you'll have uh

teams Live Events there as well um just

bringing up this documentation to kind

of showcase some of the the things that

we've got from a meetings webinar in

town hall perspective to give you an

indication as to to where uh teams

premium

uh changes some of the the the

capability and enhances some of the

capability so you'll see here we've

talked a lot about meetings and we've

talked a bit we've talked about meeting

templates and and protection um things

like watermarks custom themes all of

those we've spoken through already um

but when we're talking about um uh

webinars and town halls premium

introduces a couple of things um for

town halls specifically we increased the

capacity of town halls from uh by

default 10,000 inside of a town halls uh

inside of a town hall to to a a premium

Town Hall which allows a scale of up to

20,000

participants um and then we can break

that down even further

um from a from a feature comparison

perspective so we've got capacity

changes if you're licensed with teams

premium and we've also got um uh some

capability changes when you're licensed

with teams premium so for example using

this table we can see some of the

features you know for example custom

backgrounds is a premium capability um

endtoend encryption we've we've spoken

about briefly as premium um again

specifically for meetings but when we're

talking webinars in town hall calls um'

got the ability uh to to Really curate

um what attendees are seeing inside of a

um teams webinar so this

is um uh I'll just flick over here

quickly so this is you know managing

what what people are seeing uh during

the event so um this is a a realtime

live event that's that's occurring um

you've got the ability here and this is

a bit of an indication as to how this

works but on the left hand side you've

got all of the people that are in this

meeting or in this webinar um but then

on the right hand side you can see

Encompass by the red box um what

attendees are actually seeing and as a

as a moderator of an event or um uh as

an organizer of an event you've got the

ability to um pick and choose what's

presented on screen at what particular

point in time so if there was content

that you wanted to be seen alongside a

video or you wanted multiple video

streams you've got the ability to do

that um quite easily you can simply kind

of um select a feed and uh send it live

um so that's a really important feature

if you're looking to produce kind of

really curated experiences for

attendees um we've also got um some

capabilities for rtmp in so that's um

rtmp is realtime media protocol it's the

ability to have um custom or or

professional Style video equipment um uh

providing uh a a video stream into the

meeting so um uh I don't know if we've

got a an example here but uh if your

equipment is able to broadcast a um a

URL um the uh inside of teams uh we can

ingest that uh as a stream uh and then

uh present that in the webinar so you're

not just limited um uh in using your

team team's client um you've got the

ability to to ingest a real time uh

stream as

well when we uh look at kind of um the

different types of events uh inside of

teams and and we spoke about licensing

uh earlier on um uh when we're running a

a webinar or town hall and we require

the premium capability we only require

the uh meeting organizer to be licensed

uh with that feature um for for kind of

all attendees to benefit um so we look

at um you know creation of a specific um

webinar or an event um in order to do

that we can just come in here and and

pick the type of event that we want uh I

can pick up a webinar uh and then I can

go through the the experience of

creating um uh all of the the various

different type of um uh information

that's required to run a webinar so

we've got things like presenter bios uh

we can set custom themes um we can

enable uh registration um we can also

have um if I save some of the details

here

um uh add some

details uh I think I have to add some

bios

uh and then I can uh come down here and

I can adjust um uh you know once I've

once I've configured all of the themes

and everything that I want to want to

have inside of my webinar um I can also

have uh reminder emails go out to them

on a on a specified basis um here is

kind of a bit of a template of of what

is um uh sent in that email uh and again

there's there's a bunch of different um

options I've got here for configuring uh

emails to go out either pre the event or

post the event to share uh recordings

for

example now when we're talking about

webinars often the next um uh topic of

conversation is um how do I make my

events more uh efficient

um think I was here somewhere when we're

talking about webinars we're often the

next question is how do I make sure that

uh the experience for my users is um as

good as possible and of course we've got

some recommendations around um and some

documentation around how the the people

who are presenting inside of a webinar

or or a um town hall or a live event are

turning up making sure they've got

appropriate bandwidth their cameras are

high quality those types of

recommendations but what if we have

um users uh inside of an organization

ation perhaps you've got you know a

thousand people inside of of one

organization all consuming the stream uh

of that that event all

simultaneously um when we have an event

uh we typically you know on on a per

client basis consuming somewhere from

you know maybe 1 to one and a half

megabits per second of bandwidth per

stream um if we've got a 100 people in

that event you know or a thousand people

in that event we start to really ramp up

the bandwidth requirements

um that's where Microsoft ecdn comes

into play um uh Microsoft ecdn as I said

is is a this can be purchased as a

standalone license type but it's also

included as inside of Microsoft teams

premium um but uh when we're looking at

ecdn at a very high level um on the left

hand side uh before you have

ecdn of installed and

configured each one of these little um

uh hexagons

here is uh consuming an individual video

stream so um each one of them is you

know 1 to one and a half megabits per

second usage of bandwidth through the

firewall um out to just consume that

stream when we Implement ecdn we've got

the ability for the team's client to act

as kind of a a bit of a um a buddy for

other teams clients so uh once it's in

you can see here uh this client is

consuming the video stream through the

through the corporate firewall um onto

the corporate Network and then

Distributing that stream amongst clients

internally so um the bandwidth

requirements um for an organization are

significantly reduced um you know we've

got organizations that that that we work

with on a pretty regular basis that have

got you know somewhere even upwards of

20,000 uh users on their corporate

Network trying to consume an event um

with without ecdn uh it's um really is a

a losing battle unless you've got

significant bandwidth available to you

um through your your um internet gateway

so once you enable it is it like a

peer-to-peer

networking like peer-to-peer

connectivity cash sharing or whatever it

it is absolutely um we've had ecdn for

for a long time through um you know

we've had partners of ours deliver that

capability um but what we've done um

through one of those Partners uh and

it's now a first party offering included

natively in the teams client it is

exactly that it's a peer-to-peer um

video sharing um to help reduce that

that uh the bandwidth requirement on the

internet gateway so um as you can see

here the these are all kind of sharing

video feeds peerto peer and you can

imagine um you know again you you might

have 100 people on a particular floor uh

in in one of your buildings you might

want to have those peer together um and

you get a lot of control from a from a

configuration perspective on on that

configur on that um uh

uh those you get a lot of control on

those policies to to control which

clients peer with which clients so uh

you don't want to have obviously people

uh who are in the office peering with

those who are on a VPN subnet for

example uh and as I said you get a a

raft of control on on implementing that

so when we're talking about events uh in

in Microsoft teams um specifically at

the moment uh teams Town Hall teams live

event uh and those events hosted in

Fever engage um they are all supported

by

ecdn um to help optimize those those

events