Kurt Shintaku's Blog

If you’re interested in differentiating between what’s available with Teams Live Events and what the new Teams Town Hall feature will make available, this post may help. 

While the services will be extremely similar, I’ve been informed that there will be some differences that you should be aware of.  The core differences are documented here: Switch from Microsoft Teams live events to town halls – Microsoft Support

Some of the new announcements around what else we are releasing for Town Halls is listed below – including GCC availability.

Following our recent announcement of the general availability of the new town hall in Microsoft Teams and the retirement of Microsoft Teams Live Events, below are several key updates to share with customers regarding the existing Teams Live Events experience and the new town hall experience.

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‌Teams Live Events Updates

Teams Live Events Capacity Extensions: We previously announced the introduction of town hall for commercial customers that will replace Teams Live Events, along with the retirement of Teams Live Events for commercial customers on September 30, 2024. To help our customers with a smooth transition from Teams Live Events to Town halls, we are extending the capacity limits for Teams Live Events that are currently set to expire on December 31, 2023 – we are extending the timeline for capacity limits to now expire on June 30, 2024. This means that customers using Teams Live Events will continue to have a view-only broadcast experience for up to 20,000 attendees (previously up from 10,000 attendees); 50 events hosted simultaneously across a tenant (previously up from 15 events); and event duration of 16 hours per broadcast (previously up from 4 hours). Note, as the capacity limits expire in June 2024, customers that require more than 10,000 attendees and more than 15 concurrent events, will need to use the new town hall experience and purchase relevant Teams Premium licenses for the additional capacity. Learn more.

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‌Teams Live Events for New Teams: Currently, only presenter and attendee roles can use Teams Live Events on new Teams. Organizer roles will be able to start using Teams Live Events on new Teams by end of January 2024. Presenter roles will be able to start using Teams Live Events on new Teams by end of March 2024. Teams Live Events will be fully supported for all roles on new Teams by end of March 2024.

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‌Teams Town Hall Updates

Town Hall for Government Clouds Availability: Town hall general availability for government cloud customers (including GCC, GCC-High, and DoD) will be announced in Q1 2024, along with the retirement timeframe of Teams Live Events.

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‌3P eCDN support for Town Hall in Teams Premium: We previously announced 3P eCDN providers will be supported with advanced town hall functionality in Teams Premium that includes scaling of up to 20,000 attendees with Q&A support and concurrency of up to 50 tenants across a tenant. This support for third-party eCDN with advanced town hall in Teams Premium will be available in early February 2024 where we will enable admins to have the ability to disable Microsoft first party eCDN at a user level within a tenant for users licensed with Teams Premium and switch the users back to using a third-party eCDN as they prefer. Learn more.

Microsoft eCDN Support and Licensing for Town Halls: Microsoft eCDN (first-party) support is included as a part of the Teams Premium offer, however, as this is an attendee-based feature for town hall, it is recommended that all attendees have either a Teams Premium or standalone eCDN license in order to benefit from the eCDN capabilities. Learn more.