Figure 4. Self-start events within Yammer and Microsoft Teams enable the Microsoft Digital team to host engaging live training and support meetings for the Microsoft Teamwork Champions group, and to engage the community with real-time conversations and insights.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\nThe Champions community\u2019s program managers were also using Microsoft Teams to host monthly meetings for its members. However, the popularity of the Champions community rapidly outpaced Microsoft Teams\u2019 250-person attendee chat limit during Teams meetings. The community soon realized that it needed a new method to host events, facilitate live event communications, and support meetings in a way that would scale with the group.<\/p>\n
Supporting a self-service community<\/h3>\n With Microsoft 365\u2019s live event capabilities, the program\u2019s leaders realized they could complement the collaboration and communication tools in Microsoft Teams with the power of self-start events in Yammer to host the community\u2019s monthly live meetings. Figure 5 demonstrates how the team balances live event engagement through Yammer with self-service event production.<\/p>\n
To start, leaders created a private Yammer group where all communication around live broadcasts could occur. Although regular community engagement and communications are managed in Microsoft Teams, transitioning live event hosting to Yammer significantly increased Champions\u2019 engagement around the community\u2019s live broadcasts. Now, community leaders can manage live event broadcasts in the following manner:<\/p>\n
\nMonthly events are now scheduled within Yammer, allowing program leaders to instantly notify the private community\u2019s Yammer group about upcoming broadcasts and remind members to add it to their calendars.<\/li>\n Creating the Yammer event also creates a bridge to an environment for preproduction collaboration within the live events capabilities in Microsoft 365. There, leaders can invite others to begin collaborating for the broadcast, including members of the Microsoft Teams product group and any Champions who will have a speaking role during the meeting.<\/li>\n When the event is live, the audience can access the webcast on Yammer, ask questions of presenters, and chat with other Champions within the Yammer feed.<\/li>\n During the broadcast, moderators and presenters can also use a private chat to control presenter and producer tasks, manage content sharing, and monitor behind-the-scenes and live community chat to self-direct the flow of the meeting.<\/li>\n After the broadcast, leaders can generate rapid video-sharing and content distribution directly to the Yammer group. Even community members who couldn\u2019t attend the broadcast can access notes, recordings, and content from the event.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n
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Figure 5. Microsoft 365\u2019s self-start production options for live events provides the Microsoft Digital team with a way to directly engage the active Microsoft Teamwork Champions community.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\nOutcomes<\/h3>\n By using self-start events in Yammer, the Champions group improved its ability to support the Microsoft Teamwork Champions community\u2019s highly interactive nature during its live broadcasts. Without attendee connectivity limits, live event broadcasts are now simple to create, join, and participate in, even as membership in the community grows.<\/p>\n
Because Yammer and Microsoft Teams are part of the same platform, the Champions community team is able to:<\/p>\n
\nIncrease the number of ways product champions could discover the Champions program. Champions can join the community through Microsoft Teams and a SharePoint site or find out about the program through the Yammer group.<\/li>\n Move conversations between Yammer groups to easily direct conversations and widen knowledge-sharing.<\/li>\n Foster free-flowing community discussions of product knowledge and best practices in real-time.<\/li>\n Reduce the number of meetings and chats required to persistently share information, documents, and product knowledge.<\/li>\n Gather deeper intelligence from Yammer conversations to continually iterate and improve product training and resources.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nHow the Worldwide Learning Studios team supports critical messaging and training with modern webinars<\/h2>\n The Worldwide Learning Studios team at Microsoft provides critical support services to stakeholders who want to host webinars. A staff of 12 event producers manages the virtual-event logistics, infrastructure, and support for a variety of webcasts for many stakeholder groups. In particular, the group assists marketing and sales teams for partner and product-readiness training. Figure 6 takes a behind-the-scenes look at their support of a live event.<\/p>\n
Because the group supports large events like in-person, all-hands town halls and virtual summits, they needed a platform that could directly reach and host different audience types.<\/p>\n
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Figure 6. The Worldwide Learning Studios team uses Microsoft 365 to manage and support video and audio quality, audience and event producer views, and other real-time logistics during a live webinar.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\nCreating webinars for many audiences with Microsoft Teams<\/h3>\n Due to Microsoft 365\u2019s support of event video-streaming and desktop-sharing, the Worldwide Learning Studios team naturally transitioned to Microsoft Teams for its webinar support services. Instead of worrying about webinar logistics, stakeholders can craft messaging and share it with the right audiences with help from the team. Figure 7 demonstrates the numerous types of webinar support options that Worldwide Learning Studios can offer stakeholders. Internal support for webinars occurs in the following ways:<\/p>\n
\nA dedicated webinar event producer assigned to each requested event. The producer discusses webinar needs with the stakeholder, builds out the room for event collaboration in Microsoft Teams and schedules a webinar run-through, and manages invitations to the target audience.<\/li>\n The producer sends invitations to the webinar\u2019s target audience. Invitations can be obscured behind a shortened URL link, so if event details like date and time are changed in Microsoft Teams, new registration and attendance links do not have to be generated.<\/li>\n No later than 30 minutes before the webinar, a technician gathers final webinar slide-deck content in Microsoft Teams. With Microsoft Teams, the webinar team doesn\u2019t have to rely on internal drops and can upload files directly for collaboration and access.<\/li>\n During the webinar, the Worldwide Learning Studios team manages the live audience experience in Microsoft Teams, including access, audio, questions, and more. Product demos, which used to require specialized equipment and a secondary computer, can now be handled with Microsoft Teams\u2019 desktop-sharing options. If the webinar includes large-scale production needs, the producer will monitor the camera feeds in tandem with the deck content in one view.<\/li>\n Within 48 hours of the broadcast, the event producer provides a recording to the stakeholder and the webinar audience. The recording can be posted to Microsoft Stream or hosted in a secure location with a shortened URL.<\/li>\n The team can also create standalone segments from each event so stakeholders can provide quick replays and short, consumable clips of key event moments to their audience.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n
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Figure 7. The Worldwide Learning Studios team can build and support webinars for many different audience types, event participation needs, and production requirements with the live events capabilities in Microsoft 365.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\nOutcomes<\/h3>\n Because live webcasts are data- and process-driven projects, the Worldwide Learning Studios team can help stakeholders host impactful events that improve sales and product training, and improve readiness at a lower cost. Integrated webinar production, audience metrics, content sharing, and live monitoring all help support Microsoft\u2019s \u201ccreate once, use many\u201d approach to employee training and messaging. With live events, the Worldwide Learning Studios team can:<\/p>\n
\nOffer a reliable, full-service webinar production environment for multiple types of broadcasts\u00a0<\/strong>and allow stakeholders to run interactive webcasts to complement large-scale yearly productions.<\/li>\nSupport new kinds of engagements, such as 24-hour broadcasts and live-streamed all-hands meetings.<\/strong><\/li>\nRun higher-impact events for smaller budgets.\u00a0<\/strong>New features like video-streaming within an event no longer require stakeholders to pay for additional services, fees, and support to include in their event.<\/li>\nReduce the amount of communication noise, emails, and effort<\/strong>\u00a0that stakeholders need to invest to get internal broadcasts up and running.<\/li>\nServe geographically diverse audiences\u00a0<\/strong>and enable global webinar participation from one platform.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nBenefits of engaging employees with live events<\/h2>\n Since live event capabilities were rolled out to the enterprise, the preference for an integrated events platform increased event participation and engagement across all event types and production budgets.<\/p>\n
\nEvent participants can fully engage with each other and event producers.\u00a0<\/strong>A one-to-many interaction has been transformed into enriched, multifaceted discussions among employees and event hosts, with multiple options for participation.<\/li>\nEvent producers can run the right events for their budget, audience, and event topics.\u00a0<\/strong>An employee community can be fostered without a big budget or fancy equipment. Every user is empowered to achieve increased employee engagement, and easily provide and share the content that\u2019s right for their audience needs.<\/li>\nFewer IT systems that need to be licensed and supported to launch and distribute live broadcasts.\u00a0<\/strong>By consolidating video streaming, chat, and event management into the Microsoft 365 platform, higher-quality live event capabilities can be made available to event producers of all budget sizes with much lower overhead.<\/li>\nFrictionless event management improves event success.<\/strong>\u00a0With one integrated event platform, event producers can work in a frictionless environment that enables content to flow easily from planning to live presentation to post-event follow up.<\/li>\nVideo-on-demand sharing, closed-caption editing, and selective video segmentation supports post-event engagement.\u00a0<\/strong>By providing producers with the option to easily turn live event content into short, consumable clips, the shelf life of content can be extended and event viewers (especially those who missed the live event) can immediately rewatch, share, and discuss key moments.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nLessons learned<\/h2>\n By deploying live events across these many use cases, Microsoft Digital found that providing multiple methods of interactions ultimately enabled employees to feel more connected and engaged with corporate initiatives. The team learned that:<\/p>\n
\nEmployees want to engage with live events beyond simply watching or listening to broadcasts.\u00a0<\/strong>Once event-based conversations moved to Yammer, employees had access to embedded communication and video streaming. By providing multiple options for audience engagement, like Q&A formats, Yammer threads, and Microsoft Teams chat, live events became more dynamic and interactive.<\/li>\nEvent producers, especially for executive-level events, must be able to rely on system tenancy and performance to host events.\u00a0<\/strong>Poor video-streaming quality, discontinuous broadcasts, and joining issues affect audience participation and must be tested at scale for large audiences prior to deployment.<\/li>\nPre- and post-event engagement is just as critical to event success as live event tenancy.\u00a0<\/strong>Reinforcing corporate goals, employee engagement and concerns, and more is a revolving conversation that requires event tools that can support engagement at all times.<\/li>\nProviding event producers and participants with options to gauge the response to new capabilities is paramount to effective change management.<\/strong>\u00a0Allowing event producers to choose the technologies that work best for their events increased the success of the solution deployment and user adoption.<\/li>\nReal-time and post-event monitoring were essential to optimizing the product backend.\u00a0<\/strong>Receiving real-time information about the live-broadcast quality for thousands of viewers across the globe helped the Microsoft Digital team ensure a consistent, reliable experience for all types of live events and prove that Microsoft 365 could handle large, dispersed audiences. In-depth reporting on audience attendance and audio and video usage helped event managers prove the value of their broadcasts. It also helped them continually iterate on the content and formats they use to communicate with their audiences.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nFuture live event capabilities<\/h2>\n Microsoft Digital is continually gathering feedback from users to create even more meaningful live event capabilities, including:<\/p>\n
\nA service to facilitate pre-event registration capabilities.<\/li>\n Improvements to automated closed-captioning transcription and translation.<\/li>\n The ability to create live events directly in Microsoft Teams channels.<\/li>\n The ability to stream external encoder events to external users.<\/li>\n For organizations using only Microsoft Teams, the ability to post questions or comments before the broadcast directly in Microsoft Teams.<\/li>\n Deeper third-party AI integration for even better real-time live event insights and reporting.<\/li>\n The ability for external guests and federated users to access, view, and participate\u2014even present\u2014in live events.<\/li>\n A PSTN dial-in that will enable external users to join video broadcasts from a phone.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nExpanding the possibilities of modern employee engagement<\/h2>\n Integrated live events capabilities in Microsoft 365 helps build communities and drive employee engagement by expanding the types of live corporate events that are possible at all levels. From executive broadcasts to radio programs to recurring product training, live events in Microsoft 365 keeps communities engaged across boundaries in real-time and as conversations evolve. The result is an informed and more connected workforce that feels deeply engaged with their corporate environment and included in company initiatives.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This content has been archived, and while it was correct at time of publication, it may no longer be accurate or reflect the current situation at Microsoft. Microsoft uses integrated live event capabilities in Microsoft 365 to create, run, and share events of different types, audiences, and budgets. Using a single robust solution to produce […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":146,"featured_media":10509,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"_hide_featured_on_single":false,"_show_featured_caption_on_single":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"coauthors":[674],"class_list":["post-10508","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","m-blog-post"],"yoast_head":"\n
Improving employee engagement with live events in Microsoft 365 - Inside Track Blog<\/title>\n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n\t \n\t \n\t \n \n \n \n\t \n\t \n\t \n