Get started with Microsoft Teams Webinars


Now you can organise and hold interactive meetings and webinars for up to 1,000 attendees with Teams. Use end-to-end webinar support that's as simple as setting up a Teams meeting—including custom registration pages and attendee emails, rich presentation options, host controls, such as the ability to disable attendee chat and video, and post-event reporting to understand participation and to follow up with attendees.

How webinars are different from ordinary meetings

Ordinary meetings generally include a lot of back-and-forth among the participants: discussions, sharing, assigning and accepting tasks, making plans, maybe coming to a consensus.

Webinars, on the other hand, are more controlled, and the participants have clear roles: One or several experts (the presenters) share their ideas or provide training to an audience (the attendees).

Webinars can be used as an alternative to Eventbrite and other event management tools. 

Main Features

The main features of Microsoft Teams webinars are:

  1. Ability to create a custom registration form for each event.
  2. Add presenters and their bios.
  3. Additional rich presentation options.
  4. Publicise the event link.
  5. Additional host controls, for example, the ability to disable attendee chat and video.
  6. Post event reporting.

Webinar steps

Before the webinar

The organiser:

  1. Schedules the webinar well in advance.
  2. Prepares a registration form that each prospective attendee must fill out before receiving the webinar join info.
  3. Sends out the webinar invite to the other presenters. If the webinar will feature additional presenters, the invite goes to them. (After this step, the registration link for potential attendees becomes active.)
  4. Shares the event details and registration link with potential attendees. This can be on social media, on a web site, via email, or some other way.
  5. Downloads the registration report for data about who registered and how they responded to the registration questions.

Attendees:

  1. Register for the event.
  2. Receive an email containing webinar info and the link to join it.

Note: People can join webinars on iOS and Android mobile and tablet devices, as well as on their computers.

During the webinar

  1. When attendees select the Join link, they wait in the lobby until the organiser or a presenter lets them into the webinar.
  2. Attendee audio and video is turned off by default, and they can't share content.
  3. The presenter controls audience participation. Polls may be used during the webinar to engage the audience and provide info for the presenter.

After the webinar:

  1. The organiser downloads the attendance report.

Who can schedule a webinar

By default, anyone who can schedule a Teams meeting can schedule a webinar. If you're unable to schedule one, check Teams is on the latest version by clicking your photo in the top right of the Teams app then 'check for updates'.  

Note: Currently channel meetings and recurring meetings don't support attendee registration. Each webinar will need to be created individually to have a registration form.

Who can register for a webinar

By default anyone (internal and external) can register. You can also choose to restrict registration when you schedule the webinar.

How to schedule a webinar

Full step-by-step guidance on how to schedule webinars can be found on the Microsoft Website.