How does Microsoft Teams Live Event works?

Microsoft Teams Live Events is online meeting tool for audiences to thousands of concurrent viewers (up to 10000), where presenter team shares audio, video and content and audience or attendee community watches or hears. If you want to learn more about Live event, Live event scheduling or join, then refer my previous post. https://bloguc.com/effectively-organize-broadcasts-using-microsoft-live-events/

This article post talks about Live Event architecture, how media flows in Live event, Live event production type and how you can plan for Live event in your organization.

Let’s understand Live event architecture

Live Event High level architecture:

Following image shows Live events high level architecture, in the image you can see the organizer who organize the live event in either Teams, Yammer and Stream, depending on what production method they choose it will be in either in “Teams” where all presenter using Teams client or if production type choose as “An external app or device” then they will have production app or tools like, media mixer, mic, speaker and these are more professional video equipment then it comes to producer which is using Teams or Stream to produce live events then all these, send over Office 365 which uses Azure Media services where it goes to Content Delivery Network (CDN) to Customers. Here you have certified 3^rd party Enterprise Content Delivery Network (eCDN) providers and then viewed by all attendees via Teams client, Yammer or Stream.

Note: eCDN use are not mandatory however it will help to save your enterprise bandwidth.

How Media Flows in Live event?

Now you know Live event high level architecture, let’s dive in to media flow and understand how media flowing in Microsoft Teams Live event.

Live events media flow is similar to Teams meeting, if the production method chosen as “Teams” then all the presenters will join Teams native meeting. It is bit special teams meeting because it has all the presenter control meeting but media perspective it’s just a Microsoft Teams meeting means, all the presenter will send their audio/video/screen sharing via Real Time Protocol (RTP) to the meeting service where it sent RTP traffic to Azure Media Service however if you use production method as externally then videos provided by hardware or software encoder then it send to the Real Time Messaging Protocol (RTMP) to Azure Media Services all of that is basically Real Time Protocol (RTP) communication. Refer below image. As shown in the image, now the attendees watch stream via TCP as stream; that is not real time communication, attendee may watch live event as live near the real time because they are viewing content created after multiple seconds (delayed) however technical perspective it is just TCP stream that they are consuming and that is not sensitive to latency, jitter, packet loss, in case attendees have packet loss/ latency network impairment then the attendee might see long delays in streaming however they will not lose any of the content.

How does Microsoft Teams Live Events work?

Live Events is online meetings to audiences with thousands of concurrent viewers, where presenter team share audio, video and content and audience view the same. In Live meeting there are certain key roles which do different activity in order to successfully run the live event, every role has different permission assigned, here is the detail information about each role.

• Tenant Admin:  Tenant Admin nothing to do with live event operation however tenant admin who can configure the live events settings for tenant and set the right permission.
• Organizer: Organizer of Live event is person who schedule live event and ensure the event is set up with the right permission for attendees and the event group, who will manager the event.
• Producer: Producer is a host of the meeting, they are part of event group so they are invited to event by organizer, and they ensures attendees have a great viewing experience by controlling the media sources that are sent to the Live event. Producer actually decides who audio and video goes live in event.
• Presenter: Presenter is the person who presents audio, video, or a screen in to Live event, or they might moderate the Q&A.
• Attendee:  Attendee just view or watchthe event live or on-demand, using DVR controls, either anonyoumusly or authenticated. Can participate in Q&A.

You can schedule live event, using different options to scheduling live events or from where to schedule live event. You can schedule live event in Teams client, Yammer or Stream. Producer option for live event are using Microsoft Teams client or using external encoder (third party encoder) as source used for production methods.

How does Live event production method work?

You can produce live event using two different method, using ‘Teams’ or Using ‘An external app or device’.

Using “Teams” Live event: In Teams Live event all audio, video and content capture from producer or presenter joined machine into a Teams regular meeting. E.g. present and producer both join as teams meeting and share the audio/video/content. Refer below image.

Using “An external app or device”: In external coder Live event, audio and video coming from external hardware or software encoder. So, all media comes in one stream and goes into Live event meeting and then it broadcast to all attendees.

If you want to learn more by visiting this site: https://aka.ms/teams-encoder

Live event features available as per scheduling option:

Depending Live event schedule internally or externally, you will have different features available, you can refer below table, which shows features available in different option. Live event play in Teams client, Q&A, Teams client as video producer, downloading event recording etc. available when you schedule live event using Teams client.

Other hand playing live event in stream is only available if you schedule live event using externally, so as automatic upload to stream, embeddable live event player and spotlight live event in stream available in when you schedule externally. Other features like playing in Teams client, download recording, automatic transition to video on demand are available for both options.

Live event scheduled in Yammer- It will show a link to Teams Live Events if scheduled as “in Teams” and this live event can be watched directly in Yammer if it scheduled as “externally”.

Who can watch Live Events? 

Live event production option also effects in who will be able to watch live event as attendee. There are different attendee types, with scheduling live event in Teams and externally. To allow public (anonymous users) to attendee live event then that must be schedule with in Teams.

Remember, Guest and federated users can join only as anonymous user to live event which schedule using in Teams but cannot join to externally scheduled live event.

Everyone in company and specific groups / people can join either of live event scheduled via Teams client “in Teams” or “externally”.  Refer below table which shows attendee visibility for both live event options.

How Teams Meeting different than Live Events?

Live event and Teams meeting both are online meetings however used in different use cases. Teams meeting is interactive meeting where presenter and attendee both can interactive via audio / video however Live event are one to many or broadcast type event where event team shares audio / video and content and attendee community watches with limited interaction via Q&A.

Sometimes it is confusing on when to use Teams 1:1 call, group calls and meeting and when to use Live events “In Teams” and live event “externally”. Below table may help you in tool usage by scenarios.

Remember, the Teams 1 to 1 call, group call and meeting are fully interacted up 250 participant however Live events are more formalized it’s about broadcasting information large group of people up to 10000. The only interaction can happen in Live events are the moderated Q&A.

Depending on use case if you use live event “in Teams” then all audio, video and screen sharing are in Teams client however live event “externally” audio, video stream coming from external encoder which requires external encoder hardware. Refer below table which shows how Teams meeting, Live event In Teams and externally different.

Now you know live event is good for larger group of people for All-hand or webinar kind of event where presenter talks, and attendee hear or see and may interact via Q&A. Let’s understand network consideration for Live event because if your network poor performance will affect Live event quality for presenter and ultimately all attendees see/hear poor quality audio/video.

Networking considerations for Live event:

 Below is the network consideration for live event, if live event schedule “in Teams” then the RTP traffic is sensitive to the network delay can affect interaction between presenters and Jitter and packet loss can affect quality of audio and video. Remember the quality issues of presenter will affect all participants, if one presenter has poor network quality while sending video then all participant sees poor video stream.

If you are using Live event “externally” then the call quality issues of RTMP (Real Time Messaging Protocol) stream will affect all the participants.

For attendees, they are not watching real-time communications and not as sensitive to networking issue, however networking issues might lead to delay and buffering or reduced video quality, so plan for sufficient bandwidth for multiple people to watch from the same location. If you have thousand of people watching live event from same location, then look for eCDN provider who might help you.

Network planning: https://aka.ms/teams-networking

Live Events bandwidth planning:

Planning for presenter: Specific to the bandwidth planning, for presenter traffic, it is planning as part of regular bandwidth planning for Microsoft Teams rollout.

Planning for Internal participants: you have to plan for only internal participant because People outside of enterprise network go directly to Office 365.

Plan for biggest network impact: think of which live event meeting will attract the most concurrent users? Will users watch individually or maybe together in a meeting room? What other network impact should you expect at the same time? For all all-hand meeting user

Network planning is required per network sites, different subsidiaries and departments might attend different meetings. You should plan for per internal user as 1 to 2 Mbps required as expected.

Finally, planning & deployment of Live Event:

• License requirements
• Requirements for creating Live Event
• Settings and configuration

License and permissions requirements for Live event, depending on role, people need different license. For the organizer – you need office 365 enterprise E1, E3, or E5 license or an Office 365 A3 or A5 license. Additionally, needs Microsoft Teams, Skype for Business and Microsoft Stream license, apart from license you need permission to schedule Live events and permission to schedule Private meetings.

For Producer license – it is depending on what production they are using, for in Teams production they need Microsoft Teams license. For externally production you need Microsoft Stream license. For attendee -they don’t require any license. They just attendee for live event.

Teams Live Events policy:

You can configure live event from Microsoft Teams & Skype for Business Admin Center, or you can use PowerShell. Below screenshot you can see from Teams Admin Center > Meetings > Live Event Policies > here you can configure to allow scheduling Live event, allowing transcription for attendees, who can join scheduled live events – everyone in the organization or specific users and recording option to always record, never record etc.

Event organizer can set most restrictive settings, example live event join option as everyone however live event organizer can set to everyone in organization while scheduling.

Above all setting can configure in different policy set, like who can schedule live event with more permission than others depending the requirements.

You want to leverage PowerShell then use command:

[Get|set|new|grant]-CsTeamsMeetingBroadcastPolicy

• Allow Scheduling: Controls whether users can create a Live Event in Teams
• Allow Transcription
• Controls whether organizers can create Live Events with auto-captions & translation
• Attendee visibility options
• Allows Live Event organizers to create events with appropriate attendee visibility.
• Everyone
• Everyone in company
• Specified users & groups
• Recording options
• Controls whether the Live Events are always recorded, never recorded, or whether the event organizer can decide to record the event or not.

PowerShell:
[Get|set|new|grant]-CsTeamsMeetingBroadcastPolicy

Teams Live Events tenant-wide configuration:

There is also tenant wide configuration for Live event and that can configure using PowerShell only. You can use below PowerShell command: [get|set]-CsTeamsMeetingBroadcastConfiguration

In the same command you can configure support URL (Setup the support link that should be shown to Live Event attendees) and Allow eCDN (Setup ‘Hive’ or ‘Kollective’ as the eCDN provider).

Other policies affecting Live Events:

There are other policies which affecting Live events, example, if presenters need meeting policies that allow to screen sharing other, they will unable to share screen in live event and within meeting policies you should not limit the bandwidth for sharing. If you do, then the quality of sharing will may impacted for presenter and ultimately attendee sees bad quality.

Management and reporting:

For Managing and reporting perspective currently we have the below things: first is attendee engagement report for meeting organizer. There is another report possible via integration with HIVE Insight analytics if you have eCDN configured using 3^rd party provider. The last report available which is call analytics reporting available for inner meeting that’s part of Teams meeting report because all presenter joining teams meeting.

Microsoft is going to add usage reporting for administrator however currently this report is not available.

Thank you.