As groups are actually extra globally dispersed, digital occasions have remained a relentless to attach and convey individuals collectively no matter the place they’re, whereas doing so at a decrease price and giving attendees flexibility, accessibility, and the flexibility to interact meaningfully. Over 4 years in the past, we launched Microsoft Groups Stay Occasions, an expertise to allow large-scale occasions throughout a corporation for individuals to hitch from wherever and throughout any gadget. Nonetheless, Groups Stay Occasions was constructed on a distinct platform than the acquainted Groups assembly expertise that many people know.  

To simplify the digital occasion expertise on Groups, we’re integrating our dwell occasion capabilities into our Groups assembly expertise. This can create a unified expertise for customers whether or not they’re internet hosting a small assembly, customer-facing webinar, or company-wide city corridor.

This implies there are two key modifications taking place in our occasion area as part of this integration:

• We’re introducing ‘City corridor,’ a brand new digital occasion expertise that can exchange Groups Stay Occasions and will likely be typically obtainable for business prospects beginning October 5, 2023.
• We’re asserting the retirement of Groups Stay Occasions, the place the Groups Stay Occasions platform for business prospects will proceed to be supported over the following 12 months and absolutely retire by September 30, 2024.

Let’s dive extra into what this implies for our prospects and the digital occasion expertise on Groups transferring ahead – beginning with the brand new city corridor expertise.

Introducing City halls in Microsoft Groups

Immediately we’re excited to announce City halls in Microsoft Groups, a brand new expertise to host and ship large-scale, inner occasions to create connections throughout a corporation. City halls will present a one-to-many format with superior manufacturing capabilities and a structured method for attendee engagement. With city halls, prospects can host varied varieties of inner in addition to exterior occasions together with company-wide city halls, all fingers, international group conferences, inner broadcasts, hearth chats, and extra. City halls in Microsoft Groups allow prospects to increase their attain to scale their message and join with audiences world wide; create professionally produced, studio-quality occasions that ship a extra dynamic expertise; and construction and handle viewers engagement to maximise participation and preserve deal with the occasion.  

City corridor will exchange Groups Stay Occasions and be obtainable for Workplace and Microsoft 365 prospects¹ and superior capabilities on the town corridor will likely be obtainable for Groups Premium prospects. The brand new city corridor expertise will likely be typically obtainable and begin to roll out globally to business prospects on October 5. Beginning at launch, city corridor can have an ongoing launch of options to create parity with Groups Stay Occasions performance and can attain full characteristic parity forward of Groups Stay Occasions retirement in September 2024. For presidency prospects, together with GCC, GCC Excessive, and DoD, the final availability date of city halls will likely be introduced within the coming months.

We’re excited to share new and expanded options which can be obtainable on the town halls, in addition to introduce some superior options that will likely be obtainable as part of city halls for Groups Premium prospects together with:

• Attendee capability³: City corridor capability in Workplace and Microsoft 365 choices¹ will host as much as 10,000 attendees and as much as 20,000 attendees in Groups Premium.
• Occasion concurrency³: City corridor in Workplace and Microsoft 365 choices¹ will help as much as 15 occasions hosted concurrently throughout a tenant and as much as 50 concurrent occasions in Groups Premium.
• Occasion period: As City corridor will likely be built-in as part of the Groups assembly expertise, occasions period would be the identical as conferences period, which is as much as 30 hours and would be the identical for Workplace and Microsoft 365 choices¹ and Groups Premium.
• eCDN help³: City corridor will help third-party eCDN suppliers for Workplace and Microsoft 365 choices¹ and Microsoft eCDN (first-party) in Groups Premium². As well as, Microsoft eCDN on the town corridor will allow real-time monitoring, permitting organizers to view real-time utilization analytics for city halls within the Occasions Insights dashboard. The dashboard will present occasion utilization info together with attendee depend, peak concurrency, session period, geographic areas, and extra.
• Inexperienced room: Presenters and organizers can be a part of collectively within the digital inexperienced room to make sure preparation is seamless. With the digital inexperienced room, presenters have a separate, devoted area separate from attendees the place they’ll join and speak dwell, stage content material, do a fast briefing, and check run with out disturbing attendees. As well as, presenters and organizers have a devoted chat to leverage all through the occasion that isn’t accessible for attendees. Whereas attendees be a part of and watch for the occasion to start out, they’re greeted with a welcome display to tell them the occasion will begin shortly and may interact with the presenters via Q&A. This performance is identical as the prevailing inexperienced room expertise in Groups Stay Occasions and superior webinars in Groups Premium. Be aware, inexperienced will now even be obtainable for all Groups conferences, webinars, and city halls, together with each Workplace and Microsoft 365 choices¹ and Groups Premium.

• Handle what attendees see: To maintain attendees targeted and extra deeply engaged, organizers and presenters can handle their view in order that they solely see shared content material and members introduced on-screen. This allows organizers and presenters to convey different presenters each on and off the display into an off-screen space and share related content material for a extra polished presentation. This additionally addresses one in all our most extremely requested options – to point out extra presenters on-screen with content material. This new performance allows as much as seven presenters to be proven with content material on the display at any time.

• Disguise participant checklist: Whereas organizers and presenters are in a position to entry the individuals roster and see what number of attendees have joined, attendees received’t have the individuals roster proven. As well as, as attendees be a part of, their cameras and microphones are off by default.
• RTMP-in: Produce occasions straight from an exterior {hardware} or software-based encoder and combine totally different exterior media feeds into the occasion utilizing RTMP-in. By leveraging an exterior encoder and enabling RTMP-in, organizers and presenters can dwell stream a customized RTMP supply, whether or not it’s a professionally produced video or high-quality display sharing, to all attendees within the occasion. This performance is comparable to what’s referred to as ‘Groups Encoder’ in Groups Stay Occasions.

• RTMP-out: Organizers can stream the occasion out to a customized app or totally different endpoint outdoors of Groups utilizing RTMP-out. This enables occasions to be considered on different third-party platforms equivalent to YouTube, LinkedIn, X, Meta Office, and extra.
• Structured Q&A: Q&A allows organizers to simply reasonable the dialog and gives a seamless method for attendees to ask questions and work together with the audio system. Organizers can handle and reasonable questions and solutions as they circulate in, select which inquiries to publish or dismiss, and as solutions are shared, the responses are threaded so they’re straightforward to observe. This helps organizers handle the circulate of the dialogue, spotlight official solutions, and scale back query overload and redundancy. It additionally permits organizers to pin conversations and the choice to allow nameless posting, so attendees can submit questions and discussions anonymously. Q&A additionally permits everybody to interact with questions via reactions and to submit their very own questions and feedback. This performance is identical as the prevailing Q&A expertise in Groups Stay Occasions and in Groups webinars. Q&A will help as much as 10,000 attendees for Workplace and Microsoft 365 choices¹ and as much as 20,000 attendees for Groups Premium.
• On-demand recording: It is a recording of the occasion that’s obtainable to share with attendees to observe after the occasion has ended. Organizers are actually in a position to entry the recording throughout the city corridor setup and administration expertise by clicking on the recordings tab after which can publish the recording which routinely sends an e-mail to attendees with a hyperlink to the recording. Attendees can go to a devoted occasion touchdown web page the place the recording is hosted and may watch at any time. The on-demand recording is just like the performance in Groups Stay Occasions, nonetheless, the place the recording is accessed and printed, and the e-mail that’s routinely printed is new performance on the town halls.

• E-mail communications and customization³: Organizers can ship pre-configured e-mail templates for the occasion invitation and the occasion recording emails as a substitute of manually making a separate e-mail, copying the occasion hyperlink, and sending a calendar invite to attendees. As well as, organizers can customise these e-mail communications to raised appeal to and inform attendees, that embrace modifying the topic identify, banner and emblem, and e-mail physique. Organizers ca entry the e-mail communications within the city corridor setup and administration expertise by clicking on the emails tab and can see the 2 emails listed and when every e-mail will likely be despatched. The pre-configured e-mail communications can be found in Workplace and Microsoft 365 choices¹ and the e-mail customization is on the market in Groups Premium.

• Attendee reporting: Organizers can entry occasion reporting within the city corridor setup and administration expertise by clicking on the reportings tab and perceive general members exercise together with whole variety of attendees, particular person participant be a part of and depart occasions for the occasion, and general attendance period of particular person members. This performance is identical as the prevailing attendee reporting in Groups Stay Occasions and in Groups webinars, nonetheless, the place the reporting is accessed and downloaded is new performance on the town halls.

• Stay translated captions^3,4: Organizers with Workplace and Microsoft 365 choices¹ can choose one language from six preset languages for dwell translated captions through the occasion, whereas organizers with Groups Premium are in a position to choose from 10 preset languages. Coming later this 12 months, organizers with Workplace and Microsoft 365 choices¹ will be capable of choose as much as six languages for attendees to select from for dwell translated captions through the occasion; and the identical performance for attendees with as much as 10 languages for Groups Premium. This extra performance coming later this 12 months would be the identical because the expertise in Groups Stay Occasions. Be aware, this performance works otherwise than dwell translated captions for conferences in Groups Premium.

Whereas city halls in Microsoft Groups will ultimately attain full parity for characteristic performance in Groups Stay Occasions, there will likely be a number of variations within the expertise at launch, together with:

• Occasion roles: City halls embrace organizer, co-organizer, presenter, and attendee roles; whereas Groups Stay Occasions contains organizer, producer, presenter, and attendee roles. For city halls, there may be not a producer position obtainable at launch – that is now changed with the organizer, co-organizer, and presenter roles, as these roles now have comparable performance to the producer position together with: Begin and cease the occasion, share personal video, share exterior video, share energetic desktop or window, and choose which presenters and content material present on-screen with handle what attendees see performance.
• Exterior presenter: City halls can invite exterior attendees (anybody outdoors of a corporation) to the occasion, nonetheless the flexibility to ask exterior presenters to city halls will launch on the finish of October. This can allow exterior presenters to obtain distinctive be a part of hyperlinks to routinely bypass the foyer and make sure the meant recipient as presenter is becoming a member of the occasion.
• DVR (digital video recorder): City halls can have on-demand recordings obtainable at launch, nonetheless DVR, which permits attendees to rewind and pause through the occasion, will likely be obtainable within the coming months.
• Viva Interact integration: City halls will likely be built-in with Viva Interact to permit attendees to view the occasion in Viva Interact, whether or not the occasion is produced straight in Groups or with an exterior app or gadget, nonetheless, this performance will likely be obtainable within the coming months.

These options, together with some further performance, will proceed to roll out over the approaching months. As these options turn into obtainable on the town halls, we are going to notify prospects accordingly.

Groups Stay Occasions Retirement

With the introduction of city corridor, Groups Stay Occasions will likely be retired for business prospects on September 30, 2024. This gives business prospects with a 12-month window to arrange for the retirement and transition off Groups Stay Occasions. After September 30, 2024, Groups Stay Occasions will not be supported, and entry will likely be discontinued. Prospects won’t be able to schedule, begin, or be a part of any occasions on Groups Stay Occasions after this date. Current recordings will likely be obtainable to entry till December 31, 2024. If prospects wish to retain any recordings from prior occasions, they might want to obtain the recordings and add them to a distinct location earlier than December 31, 2024. Between now and September 2024, prospects can proceed to make use of Groups Stay Occasions with no change of their current expertise. For presidency prospects, together with GCC, GCC Excessive, and DoD, the retirement date of Groups Stay Occasions will likely be introduced within the coming months.

As we’ve targeted on innovating our conferences and webinar experiences, we’re now at a degree the place we have now built-in dwell occasion capabilities into our Groups assembly expertise and are excited to assist our prospects begin to make this shift for a richer and extra progressive occasion expertise on Groups.

Getting Began and Transitioning

We’re excited to complement our digital occasion experiences and allow our prospects to host varied varieties of occasions, whether or not it’s a group networking occasion, to an exterior going through webinar or a bigger scale, org-wide city corridor, all proper inside Groups. To assist get you began on city halls, we’re providing technical steering and help assets (obtainable Oct 5), LEAP help to share greatest practices and enable you to host a profitable occasion utilizing city halls, free instructor-led coaching, and FastTrack onboarding help for eligible subscriptions.

As we proceed to ship new innovation and attain characteristic parity on city halls, we’ll be sharing our progress with prospects each step of the way in which. We sit up for seeing the way you leverage city halls in Microsoft Groups to host dynamic, large-scale occasions and drive deeper connections with individuals and groups each inside and out of doors of your group. 

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¹Primary capabilities on the town corridor can be found in Workplace 365 and Microsoft 365 E1/E3/E5/A3/A5 plans, whereas superior capabilities on the town corridor can be found in Groups Premium.

²Coming subsequent 12 months, admins can have the flexibility to disable Microsoft eCDN (first-party) at a consumer stage inside a tenant for customers licensed with Groups Premium in the event that they select to take action and change the customers again to utilizing a third-party eCDN as they like. Nonetheless, it will outcome within the customers not gaining access to particular Groups Premium superior performance with the Microsoft eCDN and limiting general capabilities inside Groups Premium.

³These new capabilities can be found in Groups Premium. Please go to the Microsoft 365 roadmap and Microsoft Docs for extra characteristic particulars and availability.

⁴The six preset languages for Workplace and Microsoft 365 choices embrace English, Japanese, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and Chinese language; whereas the ten preset languages for Groups Premium embrace English, Japanese, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Chinese language, German, Italian, Korean, and Russian.