Teams update: Meetings and new features

Along with our usual Teams features updates, we share a reminder about when to use ‘town hall’ or ‘webinar’ meeting types. Both of these have recently seen improvements, in particular for organisers. 

Town halls and webinars  

These two meeting/event types are designed to be the natural successors to Teams Live events, which will eventually be phased out later this year.

Town hall meetings are the best way to host large scale Teams meetings for up to 10,000 attendees. Use the town hall meeting type if:  

• 

  You’re hosting a large-scale event 

• You need high-quality content sharing capabilities 
• The meeting is largely ‘hands off’ for participants 
• You’re providing extensive coverage of an event (up to 30 hours for a single Town Hall meeting instance) 

This Get started with town hall in Microsoft Teams page has useful information and links.

Webinars are structured events where presenters and participants have clearly defined roles in the meeting. Webinars have robust registration management options with customisable event and registration sites, and event-oriented default meeting options to help you set a webinar up with the minimum fuss. The Get started with Microsoft Teams webinars page explains how webinars are different to other meetings and includes some useful tips.

Keeping your Teams meeting or event secure   

Did you know that your meeting invitation can be forwarded to others, whether people or bots, that you did not intend to attend? We are frequently asked how to prevent such unwanted guests from joining Teams meetings and events. Luckily, as the meeting or event organiser, there are a few straightforward steps you can take. This information security article about setting up your meetings has more information.  

Teams features rolling out now 

Here’s our termly summary of some of the Teams improvements that Microsoft has underway for the first half of this year - we hope you find them useful: 

• Teams chat for organisers and presenters in town hall meetings and Teams webinars, away from the main meeting chat.  
• Town hall and webinar organisers can post and reply to questions with the title 'organizer' allowing organisers to present a unified and official voice when responding to questions. 
• Integrate chat notification with RSVP for meetings - No more notifications for meetings you have not accepted.  
• Voice isolation and facial recognition setup in new Teams clients will allow users to set up useful ways of being identified and clearly heard in meetings.  
• Quick sharing of files in Teams chats, shared tabs or channels - When files are shared, their permissions are maintained, ensuring that recipients have the appropriate access rights. You can add additional information to your message and @mention recipients for greater clarity and alignment.

The Microsoft 365 Roadmap always shows tools and features that are being worked on, why not take a look and see what else is of interest to you. 

Help and training 

Information about how to get Teams help, advice and training is available on the IT Help, IT Skills and the Centre for Teaching and Learning websites.  

Any member of Oxford University can join the Nexus365 User Group to stay up to date with Teams news, tips, tricks, quick-start guides and more. The code is W2CBE7. 

Did you know?

Setting up voice isolation in Teams can help you and your team be heard more clearly in meetings, filtering out background noise for more conversation-like interactions.