Teams meetings have webinar capability

Now, Microsoft has added webinar capabilities to Teams meetings.

Organize webinars as easily as regular meetings

The webinar feature for Teams meetings has been available since April 2021.

The ability to host webinars allows Teams to compete externally with products such as GoToWebinar and Zoom Webinar.

Webinar preparation

Teams meetings are either personal or channel-based. Webinar meetings can only be one-time personal events. Only the Teams calendar app can create webinar meetings, not Outlook. If you want to host a multi-day event, you must create multiple webinars. Teams doesn’t support recurring meetings or breakout rooms. Perhaps Microsoft will address these shortcomings in the future.

Teams policy settings assigned to users control who can schedule webinar meetings, and whether webinars are internal-only or accessible to both internal and external attendees. Currently, the settings are configurable through PowerShell and include:

• AllowMeetingRegistration : Controls whether a user can create a webinar meeting. The default value is True.
• WhoCanRegister : Controls who can attend a webinar meeting. The default value is EveryoneInCompany , which means both internal and guest accounts can participate. If you want to host public webinars, set the value to Everyone.
• AllowEngagementReport : Controls whether the user can download the meeting’s attendance report and registration report. Make sure this value is Enabled. A big part of running a webinar is understanding audience acquisition and participation.
• StreamingAttendeeMode : Controls whether Teams uses overflow capacity when a meeting reaches capacity (1,000 users with full capabilities). Set this setting to On to allow up to 20,000 additional participants to join the meeting. In the preview, this setting was called StreamingModeEnabled.

Here’s how to update a meeting policy with the required values:

Set-CsTeamsMeetingPolicy -Identity " Allow Meeting Recording" -AllowMeetingRegistration $True -WhoCanRegister Everyone -AllowEngagementReport Enabled -StreamingAttendeeMode Enabled

As with any changes to Teams policy settings, it may take several hours for the new settings to take effect.

One missing setting is participant privacy controls. Team meeting attendees can see other attendees’ details. This is fine for internal meetings, but perhaps not for external events. It would be nice to be able to control whether attendee details are visible to non-presenters.

Create your first webinar

Before creating a webinar meeting, the organizer should know:

• The topic of the webinar and the date of the event.
• Decide whether the event is internal or external. Once created, you cannot change the scope.
• How attendees will register for the webinar. When you create the webinar, Teams creates a registration form or page. This form contains content describing the event. It also contains the data you want attendees to provide, including custom questions. Teams generates a URL for the registration page to include in an email or on a website. This allows potential attendees to register for the event. You can also invite people to attend the webinar like regular meetings.
• The presenters. These people must be invited to the meeting.

For example, I took the details of a webinar about migrating on-premises Exchange servers to the cloud. And I replicated them in Teams. First, I created the meeting in the Teams calendar app (Figure 1). Note that I chose to require “everyone” to register for the event, meaning it’s a public webinar.

By clicking on the link to personalize the registration form, the organizer can enter:

• the details of the event,
• the speakers
• some personalized questions (Figure 2).

You can add as many custom questions as you like. But it’s best to keep questions to a minimum. We’ve set questions to require answers, so people can’t sign up until they enter a valid answer. Teams includes several predefined fields that can also be included, such as the person’s organization.

Dissemination of event news

The link to the registration form (use Copy Link to retrieve the link) looks like this:

https://teams.microsoft.com/registration/PzFitvwUokOaetLif080eA,_xwZzApnQEeEWOYGdTfHRw,8WUQVaYEeUmLGSyKDBYxnw,it7kMRLtfUOXr52oaEIfmg,2OuDgrYFWEmeCPXZCqHI1Q,yCw6Cinw5U-KvaqDX9fLxw?mode=read&tenantId=b662313f-14fc-43a2-9a7a-d2e27f4f3478

This link included in an email lets people know about the webinar and allows them to register. Keep in mind that Exchange Online limits outgoing messages to 10,000 recipients and 30 messages per minute. Therefore, webinar organizers should use a commercial email service to distribute webinar information. Figure 3 shows a ready-to-send message with the registration link embedded in the text.

Register for the webinar

Recipients who click the Register Today link are directed to the Teams registration page (Figure 4). There they can register for the webinar and answer questions posed by the organizer. The result of a successful registration is an entry in the meeting registration report. Teams then sends an email to attendees to confirm their registration. This email contains the event details, including an .ics file to add the event to the calendar.

The organizer can check potential webinar attendance at any time by downloading the registration report. However, if an unwanted person is found in the registration report, there is no way to prevent that person from attending the webinar.

Like the attendance report for normal team meetings, the downloaded copy of the registration report is a CSV file (Figure 5).

Typically, only 30-40% of registered attendees show up for a public webinar. Attendance rates are higher for internal events. Your attendance rate may vary. Similar to the attendance report available for regular meetings, Teams generates registration data.

Organize the meeting

A webinar meeting runs the same way as a regular meeting, with the usual Teams features. Presenters can share information like presentations and other apps. Teams meeting options determine whether the chat is inactive and who can bypass the meeting lobby.

In other words, if you can hold a regular team meeting, with a little preparation you can hold a webinar.

After the event

Once the webinar is over, the organizer will likely want to review the recording and decide whether to share it publicly. Teams meeting recordings are now stored as MP4 files in OneDrive for Business. It’s easy to share the recording from OneDrive or move it to a more appropriate location.

The organizer will likely also want to review data from the registration and attendance reports. This helps understand the popularity of the event and attendee engagement during the webinar. For example, did a significant number of people drop out early? The registration report is also a good source of emails for follow-up with sales representatives or others. The attendance report is less reliable because there is no email confirmation for webinar participation. Ultimately, this means that the data for external attendees lacks verified contact information.

Webinar information is searchable. This is done using lists stored in the organizer’s OneDrive for Business account. Meeting organizers must have access to Microsoft Lists as a prerequisite to hosting webinars.

Easy-to-organize webinars

Teams has provided an easy way to host webinars by leveraging its meeting capabilities. This will be a popular feature.