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What's the difference between Teams meetings, Teams webinars, and Teams live events?

Cat Xia
  • Updated

Basic differences between Teams meetings, webinars, and live events

  • Use Webinars if you want participants to RSVP through a registration page. Webinars are limited to up to 1,000 participants, whereas Live Events and Meetings can have up to 20,000 participants.
  • Use Live Events if you want to use a professional production crew and equipment, or if you simply want a moderated Q&A for audience interaction and additional advanced production features. 
  • Live Events and Webinars can only be created within Teams in the Calendar app. 
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  • Use Meetings for everything else! We generally recommend creating Meetings within the Outlook app instead of the Teams app.

Best practices for any type of meeting

  • Use the Teams desktop app, especially if you are a producer or presenter. For participants joining via mobile device, they must install the Teams mobile app. 
  • Connect via wired connection (ethernet cable) for the most reliable audio and video connectivity. 
  • Participants do not need a Teams account to join. 
  • If you're unfamiliar with managing the type of meeting, we 100% recommend creating a test version of the meeting far in advance of the actual meeting. Create the test meeting with all the same settings to familiarize yourself not only with managing the meeting, but participating in it. You can invite  external personal emails to test with, or you can loop the CTD Help Desk in to help you test.
    • And for participants, we 100% recommend testing the your ability to join the meeting in advance of the meeting, giving yourself enough time to troubleshoot any technical difficulties.
  • External presenters should join the meeting with the same email address that was used to invite them. They do not need to sign up for a Microsoft or Teams account. If there are any issues, please ensure they are not signed into another account in the Teams app.  
  • See: Best practices for a large Teams meeting

Guides to get you started

For Meetings

For Webinars

For Live Events

Host an event

Note: You cannot stop and restart a Live Event. Do not end an event before it's actually over. Otherwise, you'll have to recreate it and send out a new link to attendees. As a best practice, we recommend creating a separate test event with all the same settings and use that to test at least 48 hours prior to the real event.

Attend an event

If you have any questions, please contact the CTD Help Desk.

Related:

For Microsoft Teams Rooms:

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