Overview of Teams meetings and events

8 minutes

Within Microsoft Teams, there are different ways to connect to your coworkers, partners, or customers. In total Microsoft Teams provides three different meeting types, which are explained later.

Teams Meetings

Microsoft Teams Meeting can be set up in many different ways. As scheduled meeting, ad-hoc meeting, channel meetings, meet now or group calls.

Meeting type	Description
Scheduled or Private Meetings	These meetings are typically used for more formal or planned discussions, such as 1:1 meetings, team meetings, or project reviews. Scheduled meetings can be set up with an agenda and relevant documents shared ahead of time, and participants receive a calendar invite with the details.
Channel Meetings	These meetings are designed to take place within a specific Teams channel, providing a dedicated space for team members to collaborate and communicate on a particular topic or project. Channel meetings can be scheduled or initiated on the fly, and all channel members can participate.
Instant Meetings	These meetings are more informal and spontaneous, allowing users to quickly start a meeting from within a chat conversation or Teams channel. Ad-hoc meetings are great for quick catch-ups or informal brainstorming sessions.

Breakout rooms

Within Teams Meetings, larger teams can take advantage of the breakout rooms feature. Teams breakout rooms allow meeting organizers to split larger meetings into smaller groups for focused discussion or collaboration. With breakout rooms, participants can have more intimate discussions, brainstorming sessions, or collaboration sessions, similar to small group sessions in a physical meeting.

Teams Webinars

Webinars are structured meetings where presenters and participants have clear roles. A key difference between webinars and Teams meetings is that webinars support robust registration management, a customizable event and registration site, and event-oriented default meeting options.

Teams Premium offers additional webinar functionality through the Teams Premium subscription.

Some of the key benefits of Microsoft Teams Webinars include:

Large audience capacity: Teams Webinars can host up to 1,000 attendees, making it easy to reach a large audience for events like company-wide meetings, training sessions, or public webinars.
Interactive features: Teams Webinars provide interactive features such as live polls, Q&A sessions, and surveys that can help keep attendees engaged and provide valuable feedback.
Customization: Teams Webinars allow customization of registration pages, branding, and pre-event emails, making it easy to create a branded experience for attendees.
Analytics: Teams Webinars provide detailed analytics such as registration, attendance, and engagement metrics that can help organizers evaluate the success of their event and make improvements for future events.
Security: Teams Webinars provide enterprise-grade security and compliance features, including end-to-end encryption, multifactor authentication, and compliance with industry standards.

Overall, Microsoft Teams Webinars can help businesses and organizations engage with their audiences, enhance their brand image, and improve their communication and collaboration capabilities.

Teams Town halls

Town halls are generally best for situations where a limited number of presenters are presenting to a large group of attendees and direct interaction via chat or voice conversation isn't needed. For these event formats, attendees don't use their cameras and mics, but instead use Q&A to engage with presenters and organizers.

Teams Premium offers additional town hall functionality through the Teams Premium subscription. The breakdown of features is highlighted in the following table:

Large audience capacity: Teams Town halls can accommodate up to 10,000 attendees, making it suitable for organizations of all sizes, and expanded to 20,000 with Teams Premium.
Interactive Q&A: Attendees can participate in the town hall by asking questions through the Q&A feature. This promotes engagement and allows for real-time interaction between presenters and participants.
Live video streaming: Presenters can broadcast their video and audio in real-time to all attendees, ensuring a seamless and immersive experience.
Recording and playback: Teams Town halls allows organizers to record the entire session, including audio, video, and shared content. This recording can be made available for playback later, allowing attendees who missed the live event to catch up at their convenience.
Analytics and insights: Organizers can access analytics and insights about the town hall, such as attendance statistics, engagement levels, and Q&A interactions. This data can help evaluate the success of the event and make improvements for future town halls.
Security and privacy: Teams Town halls leverages the security features of Microsoft Teams, ensuring that the meeting remains private and confidential. Attendees can join with their existing Teams accounts, providing an added layer of security.

Teams Town halls simplifies hosting large virtual meetings, promoting engagement, collaboration, and effective communication.

Note

The limits and features increase from time to time. View the latest up to date limitations on Meetings, webinars, and town halls.

Virtual Appointments app

The Teams Virtaul Appointments app enables a seamless end-to-end experience for business-to-customer engagements, integrating schedules, analytics, and management options, all in one place.

You can schedule, view, and manage virtual appointments, get real-time status updates in a queue view, send appointment reminders, view analytics and reports on virtual appointments activity, and configure calendar, staff, and booking page settings.

With a Teams license, you can use basic Virtual Appointments capabilities to schedule and join business-to-customer meetings.