Introduction to Teams

In this article:

• What can Teams do for me?
  • Who uses it?
• Getting Assistance
• Planning Your Meeting
  • Type of Meeting
  • Selecting Your Meeting
  • Inviting Attendees
• Configuring your meeting options
  • Green Rooms and User Roles
  • Recording the Meeting
  • Breakout Rooms
  • Enabling Audience Q&A
• Rehearsals
• Operating a show

The articles in this section will help you take full advantage of the features offered by Microsoft Teams with articles detailing how to prepare and run a meeting featuring multiple presenters.

What can Teams do for me?

You're likely here because you need to host a meeting, and you don't know too much about using Teams. Luckily for you, Microsoft Teams comes loaded with features, and they're continuously adding more. Using Teams, you can:

• Configure meeting settings
• Invite attendees
• Manage attendees
  • Muting/unmuting, and preventing people from unmuting to ensure no interruptions
  • Manage presenters and attendees
  • Add internal and external attendees from the lobby/remove from meetings
• Share content (both audio and video)
  • Presentations and websites
• Record and transcribe meetings
• Prepare for meetings with Green Rooms
• Spotlight content

Who uses it?

Though it's very similar functionally to Zoom, we do not generally sell teams as a virtual solution to our clients. However, for most all internal and other meetings, we use Teams.

Getting Assistance

When it comes to using Teams to hosting your event, assistance is right at your fingertips (if you want it). There are several ways you can run the meeting:

• Fly Solo - If this isn't your first rodeo & you know exactly what to do, feel free to tackle the meeting on your own.
• Get help to fly solo - If you think you've got things covered but need someone to spot check things, you can get assistance until you're ready to go on your own.
• Engage a Support Center operator - If you'd like, Support Center can take care of everything, from double checking the settings to managing attendees. You'll need to fill out a request form to start the process.

Planning Your Meeting

When you're setting up your meeting, there are a number of things to consider prior to setting up the meeting itself.

Type of Meeting

The first thing you'll need to consider is the type of meeting you're holding.

• Standard meeting - These meetings can hold up to 1,000 attendees (or 10,000 in view-only mode). You'll be able to take advantage of all the features, including content sharing and breakout rooms. This meeting type is designed for lots of collaboration and interactivity.
• Webinar - Webinars hold up to 1,000 attendees. Unlike Meetings, you can not have breakout rooms, nor can you have view-only participants. Users can still share content. This meeting type is designed for group presentations.
• Town Hall - A town hall can hold up to 10,000 participants. There's very little in the way of customization with town hall meetings; there's no lobby or breakout rooms, and attendees' mics and cameras are disabled. Content sharing is limited to Q&A only. This meeting type is designed for a large company-wide presentation.

Inviting Attendees

Next, you need to invite your attendees.

• Consider the meeting type before choosing how many people to invite.
• External attendees outside of your organization can be invited.
  • Please note that if you invite any users on Android or iOS devices, they will need to download the Microsoft Teams app to join the meeting and participate.

If you're looking to invite a large number of attendees, consider creating a distribution list so you're not inviting everyone individually.

Configuring your Meeting Options

Microsoft Teams offers a variety of options for you to customize your meeting. You can configure all of these options and more by clicking more options when setting up the meeting.

Green Rooms and User Roles

The Green Room must be toggled before the meeting starts. The organizer, co-organizers, and presenters will automatically join the Green Room when joining the meeting. It's important to note that the Green Room's capacity is limited to 100 users. To enable the Green Room, you must first choose your co-organizers and who can present.

Each role has different abilities, so make sure people are assigned to the correct role.

After the co-organizers and presenters have been set, you'll be able to toggle the Green Room.

Recording the Meeting

Do not set the meeting to automatically record.

There's an extremely important option that we want to make sure you notice, and that's the option to record the meeting automatically. While it sounds convenient, this is one option that we want to double, triple, and quadruple check is turned off. The reason for this is because if it's enabled, it assigns ownership of the recording to the first attendee that enters the meeting, and as you can imagine, it could make sharing the recordings a nightmare. Just make sure to manually start recording once the meeting begins.

Breakout Rooms

If you need to split your meeting into smaller groups, you're able to create Breakout Rooms prior to and during the meeting. You can manually or randomly assign people to each room before or during the meeting, and you can assign room managers as well. This is a great way to have discussions about specific topics without disrupting the entire meeting.

Breakout Rooms have a capacity of 300. That means if your meeting has more than 300 attendees, the option to have Breakout Rooms will not be available. Similarly, if you set up Breakout Rooms prior to the meeting's start, the meeting's capacity will be reduced to 300.

Enable Audience Q&A

• Enable Questions from the Audience - This is also a feature that you'll need to turn on prior to the meeting starting. While you can always offer chat in meetings, Q&A is recommended for a more structured presentation. To further control the narrative, you can have moderated Q&A, which is available in the Q&A settings menu once the meeting has started.

Rehearsals

Prior to holding the meeting, you should hold a rehearsal. It's important to familiarize yourself with every feature and their locations so you don't have any hiccups during the meeting. This initial rehearsal should be just for you, where you start a meeting and mess around with the settings.

Next, you'll run through everything as if you were holding the meeting now. Invite the co-organizers and presenters and run through the presentation, including setting up a Green Room, muting others, and sharing content. Make sure everyone knows their role and knows how to do the things they need to do.

Operating a Show

It's showtime! As an operator, you'll kick things off by starting the meeting. Attendees will flow into the lobby, and your co-organizers and presenters will be filtered to the Green Room, where you can rehearse the presentation one final time. Once you're ready to begin the meeting, you'll need to check and make sure everyone's microphones are on the right setting.

When you start the meeting, take a few seconds to do introductions, then make sure to announce that you're going to be starting the recording, and then do so. Remember, the meeting will not be recorded automatically, so you must remember to start the recording.

Make sure everyone has their presentations ready to go. During the meeting, if someone's speaking, make sure that their screen holds the spotlight and their screen is sized correctly — you don't want someone speaking in a tiny window!  

Finally, if you've enabled video screens, be mindful of the content displayed on others' screens. Remember, you can turn off an individual user's video feed, or disable everyone's completely. If you need to, you can also remove them from the meeting.

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