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Microsoft recently updated Teams options to make creating a Town Hall more straightforward. This guide walks you through how to do this.
NOTE: You can only do this from a single account, not a Teams channel.
1. In Teams, go to your Calendar.
2. In the top corner, click the down button next to “New event” and click “Town hall”.
3. In the window that pops up, enter the title, date, time, and description as needed.
a. These can be edited after creating the meeting, and will send updated invitations to attendees, organizers, co-organizers, and presenters.
4. Under “Event group”, you’ll automatically be listed as the Organizer.
a. Add co-organizers and presenters here.
b. Co-organizers are able to edit the event.
c. Presenters are able to turn their microphone and camera during the meeting and see Q&A, but cannot edit the meeting details.
d. If you are adding external presenters outside of our school, you will have to click “Add external presenters” and enter the exact email they will be using to join the meeting.
i. “Chat with event group” will be available once you have saved the meeting and sent the invitations out.
ii. This will only be available before, during, and after the meeting to organizers, co-organizers, and presenters.
5. Under “Event access”, the default option is “Your organization”. This means only people with emails from our organization will be able to join the meeting.
a. If you are publicizing this Town Hall, click “Public”.
b. If this is a private meeting that you only want specific people joining, click “People and groups”.
6. Under “Invite attendees”, add people or groups as needed.
a. This does not include the public. You will be able to publish the link later on for the public to join.
b. Adding attendees means individuals will receive invitations and be able to accept or decline the meeting invitation as normal.
7. Leave “enable attendee emails” on.
8. At the bottom, there’s a box called “Attendee experience”.
a. Keep Q&A on so attendees that can’t access chat can still ask questions.
b. Keep “Allow attendance report” on. This helps you keep record of what happened and who attended.
9. Click “Meeting Options” at the bottom of that box.
10. In the new window, under “Meeting access”:
a. “People dialing in can bypass the lobby”
i. We suggest keeping it off unless you plan on having people dial in from their phones.
b. “Who can admit from the lobby”
i. We suggest leaving it as “Organizers, co-organizers, and presenters” chosen.
c. “Announce when people dialing in join or leave”
i. We suggest keeping this off.
d. “Require unverified participants to verify their info before joining”
i. If the meeting is open to the public, leave this off.
ii. If it’s for a specific group or only people within the organization, you can turn it on.
11. Under the next section, “Production tools”:
a. “Who has control of production tools”
i. We suggest leaving it as “Organizer, co-organizers, and presenters”. This means they can control what screens show to attendees.
b. “Manage what attendees see”
i. Only the people you’ve selected above can manage the screens.
ii. We suggest leaving it “On”.
c. “Enable Green room”
i. This is on by default when creating Town Halls. Green Rooms allow organizers, co-organizers, and presenters to enter the meeting early and check audio, video, and content sharing before the attendees are allowed into the meeting.
ii. We suggest leaving this on.
12. Under the next section, “Participation”:
a. “Allow mic for attendees” is off by default and can’t be toggled on for Town Halls
b. “Allow camera for attendees” is off by default and can’t be toggled on for Town Halls
i. You can add people as presenters if you need them to be able to speak freely
ii. You can also go in individually and toggle it on and off during the meeting
c. “Q&A”
i. We’ve touched on this earlier, so leave it as adjusted earlier.
d. “Who can manage Q&A”
i. The options are “Organizers and co-organizers" or “Organizers, co-organizers, or presenters”.
1. What you choose is based on who you want to moderate.
ii. They can change settings in the meeting for Q&A, dismiss questions, approve questions to be shown to the attendees, or privately respond to messages from attendees.
e. “Allow attendance report”
i. We touched on this earlier, so leave it as adjusted earlier.
13. Under the next section, “Recording and transcription”:
a. “Record and transcribe automatically”
i. In Town Halls, this is by default on.
ii. If you choose to have a Green Room, this will automatically start recording when you allow attendees in.
iii. If you do not want recordings and transcriptions for the Town Hall, toggle this off.
iv. If you change your mind during the meeting, you can start it then.
b. “Spoken language in this meeting”
i. Leave as “English (US)”.
14. The next section, “Copilot and other AI” is automatically turned off by IT administrators so you won’t need to toggle it.
15. The last section is “Accessibility”.
a. Here, you can turn on “translate attendee captions”.
b. We suggest leaving it as is unless you know you’ll need translated live captioning during the meeting.
16. Click “Apply” and it will close this window.
17. At the top of the Meeting Details window, click “Save”.
18. After saving, you’ll be able to click “Publish” in the top right corner. Verify you want to send out invites to attendees.
19. The window will now show links you can copy.
a. You can also find these links in the email invitations sent out or by clicking “Share event” in the Meeting details window.
If you need to change details, double click the event in your Teams calendar and adjust as necessary.
Any changes made after the initial invitations are sent will prompt a new invitation to be sent out to all attendees.