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Microsoft Teams Live Events vs. Teams for Webinar vs. Teams Meetings with Overflow: Which is Best for Internal Comms?

CMMA Blog

Microsoft Teams Live Events vs. Teams for Webinar vs. Teams Meetings with Overflow: Which is Best for Internal Comms?

Today’s solutions for corporate communications are more robust than ever and Microsoft remains a top player by continuously innovating the Microsoft Teams video platform . New product features are amazing but can often confuse the end user. Do you know when to use a Teams Live Event vs. Teams Meeting with Overflow vs. Teams Webinar? The Enterprise Video Strategy (EVS) team at Kollective will help you navigate the best solution for your particular use case.

Microsoft Teams Live Events

Teams Live Events are an extension of Teams meetings that allows users to deliver video and other content to large audiences. It’s Microsoft’s primary one-to-many communication tool and is ideal for events where the host needs complete control of the content being presented – like a CEO Town Hall or All Hands Meeting.

In a Teams Live Event, presenters and producers handle sharing audio, video, or their screen with the audience and only one presenter can be active at a time. The audience can interact with presenters via moderated Q&A sessions or in Yammer. Attendees who are unable to watch the event live can view the recording after in Teams, Stream or Yammer.

Another benefit of Teams Live Events is that they fully integrate with enterprise content delivery network (ECDN) technology. An ECDN enables organizations to scale high-quality live and on-demand video behind the corporate firewall by optimizing bandwidth consumption. This is especially important for enterprises and small and medium businesses (SMB) with offices challenged by network capacity, remote locations and/or bandwidth limitations.

What are the Pros and Cons of Microsoft Teams Live Events?

Pros

  • Host up to 20,000 attendees through December 31, 2021
  • High production value
  • Equal access of features
  • Full ECDN functionality

Cons

  • Limited interactivity
  • Takes some training to understand how to use

When to Use Microsoft Teams Live Events

Teams Live Events remain the gold standard for large-scale, one-to-many communications. Choose to host a Live Event for meetings where audience interactivity is not necessary and executive polish is required.

Microsoft Teams Meetings with Overflow

While typical Teams meetings allow you to host up to 250 participants, Teams Meetings with Overflow expands that, now enabling up to 10,000 attendees to join your meeting. The first 1,000 users that join get to enjoy the same Teams Meeting experience they know and expect: they can share their own audio and video, view shared content, and interact in chat. Attendees that join after the 1,000-user capacity is met enter in view-only mode with reduced interactive capabilities.

View-only attendees cannot take part in chat or view PowerPoint Live files, or files shared using individual application shares. They are also not included in the event analytics, making it difficult to gain full insight into meeting performance.

The only way to know more about your Overflow attendees and their quality of experience is by deploying an ECDN. When used during a Teams Meeting with Overflow, an ECDN scales content and collects analytics for all view-only users.

What are the Pros and Cons of Microsoft Teams Meetings with Overflow?

Pros

  • Higher attendance capacity than a standard Teams Meeting
  • Collaborative environment
  • Easiest set up of Teams video solutions

Cons

  • No analytics collected on overflow attendees without Kollective ECDN
  • ECDN only scales Overflow viewers
  • Technical limitations

When to Use Microsoft Teams Meetings with Overflow

Microsoft Teams Meetings with Overflow should only be used when you require the same level of interactivity as a standard Teams meeting with over 250 users. If your network does not have the capacity to scale live video to 1,000 employees, opt for a Teams Live Event instead.

Microsoft Teams Webinar

Micrsoft recently released its new Webinar tool for Microsoft Teams . Designed to compete with top virtual event platforms, Teams Webinar offers many of the same benefits, including event registration pages, breakout room configurability and a dashboard that displays attendance data relative to registration details.

Teams Webinar does support ECDN functionality, scaling video for viewers behind the corporate firewall. An ECDN also supplies advanced analytics for all attendees, so you know who, what, where and when your Webinar was consumed.

What are the Pros and Cons of Microsoft Teams for Webinars?

Pros

  • Host up to 1,000 attendees
  • Registration page integration
  • Disable/enable cameras and microphones (globally or individually)
  • Configuration of breakout rooms before the meeting
  • Breakout room timers, room retention, and attendee reassignment
  • Dashboard displays registration and attendance data

Cons

  • Focused on external customer engagement, not internal use

When to Use Microsoft Teams for Webinars

Microsoft Teams for Webinars is best for meetings where you want a high-level of interactivity and tracking for up to 1,000 attendees. While Webinars can be used internally, it is especially useful for external communications and marketing activities.

Choose the Right Tool for the Task

To determine which option in the Microsoft Teams ecosystem is right for you, consider the purpose of your event and how you want your attendees to engage. For events where a high-level of interactivity is needed, consider Webinars or Teams Meetings with Overflow. However, for one-to-many communications and large-scale internal broadcasts, Teams Live Events will serve you best.

Learn more about Microsoft Teams video solutions and virtual event best practices from our team of experts. Sign up for a FREE one-hour consultation with Kollective’s Enterprise Video Strategy team. We will review your requirements, help you navigate the platform and help you choose the right Microsoft Teams video solution.

The post Microsoft Teams Live Events vs. Teams for Webinar vs. Teams Meetings with Overflow: Which is Best for Internal Comms? appeared first on Kollective Technology .

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Webinar Recap: What Great Analytics Reveal About Microsoft Teams Live Events

analytics

Microsoft Teams Live Events have become an indispensable tool for enterprise communications. From high production events like company-wide town halls to crisis communications requiring quick turnarounds, Teams Live Events can engage and connect distributed workforces. To ensure these communications are successful, Live Event reporting is crucial.

In a recent webinar, What Great Analytics Reveal About Microsoft Teams Live Events , Garrett Gladden, Director of Product Management at Kollective, outlined the importance of understanding Live Event reporting data, identifying key performance indicators (KPIs) for Live Events and how adding an advanced analytics platform provides those insights where and when you need them.

Let’s Talk Teams

Teams Live Events are an extension of Teams Meetings meant for one-to-many communications. With Live Events you can broadcast to up to 100,000 attendees no matter their location or device.

Garrett was joined by Raphael Barini, Microsoft Modern Workplace Technical Architect at the time of the recording, who ran a quick demo on creating and running a Teams Live Event.  In the demo he covered:

  • How to set-up a Live Event in Teams
  • A breakdown of the different options you have when creating your event
  • Best practices for inviting attendees
  • Starting and managing the event as a Producer

The ease and simplicity of Teams Live Events allows anyone in the organization to set-up an event to relay important messages efficiently and at scale.

Data Needs Meaning

Teams Live Events produce a large amount of data. To be of any value in running a successful event, that data needs meaning. Finding that meaning, Garrett explained, requires two things – recency and relevance. Recency requires accessing the data when you need it which, to be actionable, is during the event. To achieve relevance, that data needs to be surfaced where you need it, in a centralized and easy to use dashboard.

Meaningful (and Easy) KPIs

Teams Live Events provide Attendee Engagement reports you can download after the event but does not provide actionable data in a usable format while the event is in process. To access this data as well as additional insights into video performance and employee engagement in real-time Garrett recommended using an advanced analytics platform like Kollective IQ .

Using a Southeast Asia business strategy planning event as an example, Garrett detailed the metrics you can access from a Teams Live Event with Kollective IQ. The event was held during COVID-19 lockdowns with the majority of attendees joining the event from home. The high-level analytics pictured in the dashboard below show that the event was a success.

Teams Live Events metrics with Kollective IQ analytics

Quality of Experience (QoE) Score shows what the experience was for everybody receiving the event content. The score is a combination of two metrics – the bitrate or quality of the video they received and the time to first frame or how long they waited for the video to arrive.
Average View Duration measures whether viewers stayed for the duration of the broadcast or dropped off letting you know how much of the content was consumed.
Reach indicates the attendance rate for the event and is measured by unique viewers.
Bandwidth Savings is the amount of bandwidth saved by using Kollective’s Enterprise Content Delivery Network (ECDN) to deliver the live event.
Peering Efficiency is another indicator of the ECDN’s performance and in this example shows that high concentration regions were able to share content at the edge, pulling the Live Event from a peer rather than the network.
Geo Explorer shows where the content was consumed.

This data quickly answers the questions:

  • Did attendees have the experience that we wanted?
  • Did people watch for the duration showing that we effectively communicated with them?
  • Did we reach the number of people that we targeted?
  • Did we reduce strain on our network?
  • Did Kollective’s peering do the heavy lifting instead of our network?
  • Where and by whom was the content consumed?

For a deeper understanding of the data or specific users, Kollective IQ allows you to drill down into and explore each of these metrics.

Teams + Kollective IQ

Microsoft Teams lets you produce and distribute live events to your entire workforce no matter their location or device. Adding an advanced analytics platform to the mix lets you visualize your attendee experience and network performance and make real-time adjustments.

Kollective IQ offers you:

  • Persona-based workflows with stellar UX
  • Delivery of ALL data to clients, with data mining, exploration, and custom
  • calculations
  • Custom visualizations and dashboards
  • Data exportability with many formats to many destinations

Test out Kollective IQ’s valuable and actionable insights for Teams Live Events today.

The post Webinar Recap: What Great Analytics Reveal About Microsoft Teams Live Events appeared first on Kollective Technology .

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Webinar Recap: Delivering Live Video in Challenging Network Environments

Agent

Global organizations rely on video communications to connect their dispersed workforces but providing a high-quality digital experience to every employee no matter their location is a challenge faced by many multinational enterprises operating in APAC countries. Legislative technologies like the Great Firewall of China, poor bandwidth and latency issues can be disruptive and prohibitive to delivering enterprise video at scale.

During our webinar Delivering Live Video in Challenging Network Environments , Stephanie Newman, Director of Channel and Alliances EMEA at Kollective, was joined by Luca Licata, Director of Technology and Engineering at wtv. and Garrick Ransome, Technical Director APAC at Kollective to discuss trends, challenges and possible solutions when delivering global video communications.

The Growing Demand for Video at Scale

From live event webcasting to day-to-day video conferencing, video has become standard practice in the enterprise. 2020 saw, on average, a 45% growth in live video usage, according to a recent IDG Market Pulse Survey and Luca Licata pointed out that utilization of wtv. EasyWebcast jumped from 950,000 visitors to 1.5 million during this time.

The use of video has allowed international workforces to communicate and collaborate in real-time. This, alongside initiatives like the Shanghai Free Trade Zone, has led many corporations to open up in China. As part of the Kollective APAC team Garrick Ransome has seen the ability to engage with employees in China become an “essential requirement” for many global organizations.

The challenges of engaging a dispersed global workforce

Video is a bandwidth intensive application and even in the best of circumstances can put a significant strain on the network. Low bandwidth and slow technology adoption in APAC are common challenges Garrick Ransome has faced working with customers in the region. To support video, IT often has to make compromises like reducing the quality of the video or, as Luca Licata experienced, splitting a webcast into multiple sections for each department.

China presents its own unique challenges due to infrastructure and legislative technologies. The Great Firewall of China negatively affects live streaming due to added latency, packet loss and congestion. Video applications that don’t have infrastructure located in China require users to pull streams from outside the country leading to an inconsistent experience, disconnects or failed delivery.

Engaging Employees Effectively with Video

The shift to video has been a challenge many networks have not been prepared for. While there is always the option of purchasing additional hardware and making costly upgrades Luca Licata and Garrick Ransome shared alternatives that organizations can quickly adopt to ensure quality video delivery in challenging environments.

Using platforms with infrastructure located in China, like wtv. EasyWebcast, bypasses the Great Firewall, Luca Licata said, and allows viewers to pull the stream from a nearby content delivery network point of presence (CDN PoP). He went on to add that the use of a China-based CDN will help reduce latency, but as employees begin returning to the office and pulling video simultaneously, network bottlenecking becomes an issue. To avoid this, he recommends adding an enterprise content delivery network (ECDN) to optimize the network for video delivery at scale. Kollective’s ECDN uses smart peering technology to distribute content efficiently and reduces up to 99% of bandwidth consumption.

Diagram of traditional CDN content delivery versus Kollective ECDN

How to deliver live video events in china

Many enterprises rely on a multi-tool strategy for communications and some of those platforms do not have infrastructure inside of China. Garrick Ransome brought up the example of Microsoft Teams and Stream which do not have local CDN PoPs and yet are heavily adopted by global organizations. He detailed two scenarios to use these applications in China:

  1. Bypass the Great Firewall by routing through wide area network (WAN)
  2. Go through the Great Firewall

In the first scenario, what can deter organizations from using this is the cost of the WAN links. For this solution to be viable for video at scale, traffic must be reduced. In this situation he recommends using Kollective’s Browser-Based Peering to:

  • Lower transit costs
  • Optimize network performance
  • Reduce bandwidth consumption

Scenario two comes into play for many companies that do not have the infrastructure to route through WAN or their corporate policy mandates they connect through the Great Firewall. Going through the Great Firewall means added latency, unpredictable packet loss and congestion which can lead to a poor experience or event failure. This scenario requires the use of a latency tolerant solution like Kollective Agent to:

  • Provide persistent caching
  • Communicate over a latency tolerant UDP-based protocol
  • Add an extra buffer to help recover packet loss

speak with an expert on enterprise video delivery

If you’re having difficulties delivering live video in challenging network environments, Kollective can help. Speak with an expert today to learn more about the solutions available to you.

The post Webinar Recap: Delivering Live Video in Challenging Network Environments appeared first on Kollective Technology .

To view our Partner blog, click here

Network Testing for Live Video: What You Need to Know

CMMA Blog

When offices closed and workers became remote in 2020, businesses turned to video to keep connected. This increased adoption led to a 45% surge in live video usage, according to a recent IDG Market Pulse Survey , as video became critical for enterprise communications.

With 75% of executives expecting to see half of their workforce back on-site by July 2021, according to the January 2021 PwC Remote Work Survey , hybrid workplace scenarios and physical distancing limitations will require the continued use of live video. The influx of on-site viewers paired with the demand for enterprise video will put a strain on networks many will not be prepared for. To be certain networks will not be put at risk, video-specific network testing must be implemented.

Video’s Impact on Network Capacity

As the high use of live video continues and the number of employees on the corporate network increases, the impact on network performance will be significant. Video is a bandwidth-heavy medium. If a network’s bandwidth is insufficient, it can quickly become overwhelmed leading to event failure, or in worst-case scenarios, impact business-critical applications.

For context, live events created in Microsoft Stream get a fixed encoding profile:

  • 720p – 3.5 mbps
  • 540p – 2.2 mbps
  • 396p – 1.4 mbps
  • 288p – 850 kbps
  • 216p – 550 kbps
  • 192p – 200 kbps

What’s important to note is that video playback is not a static number and will change according to:

  • The video’s original resolution, bitrate and content
  • A user’s available bandwidth
  • Size of the player

Estimates on the impact of video on a network can be made by measuring and sampling the bandwidth of a typical piece of content and extrapolating that data across the anticipated number of viewers. The more viewers, the higher the bandwidth, leading to network spikes that impact the viewing experience as well as every application relying on the same network.

Organizations familiar with the pressure delivering live video at scale puts on their networks utilize an enterprise content delivery network (ECDN) browser-based peering platform . With browser-based peering, one user accesses the video and shares it with those nearby, reducing bandwidth consumption and ensuring live video does not take down the network.

Why Traditional Load Balancing Technology Isn’t Enough

To prepare for the increased strain, 93% of IT managers say they have tested their networks, according to the IDG survey. With 59% of those respondents expecting a modest to moderate impact and only 28% anticipating a significant impact, the threat is being underestimated.

When tests send pings across the network between two endpoints, they’re usually looking at time to live (TTL) and round-trip time (RTT). It’s more difficult and less common to simulate the load that a 720p video stream at scale causes. The ramp rate for the data is extremely unpredictable, and a load balancer’s ability to scale when you’ve got a large meeting is hard to simulate.

Network Readiness Testing is the Last-Mile Load Balancer for Live Video

Traditional network testing does not cover all the variables created by live video. Kollective’s Network Readiness Test was developed to bridge that gap and provide event-specific insights on your network’s performance.

By simulating a high-quality live event, the Network Readiness Test allows you to replicate the unique conditions of your upcoming event and provides detailed performance data like:

  • Quality of Experience (QOE)
  • Bandwidth Savings
  • Peering Efficiency
  • Reach
  • Duration

The Network Readiness Test provides seamless network testing with no additional software necessary. Running silently in a hidden browser, there is no impact on end users while testing is in process.

Know Your Network is Ready

As employees return to the office and stream live and on-demand video at their desks, corporate networks that have not been properly tested are at risk of exceeding capacity. Network Readiness Testing takes the guess work out of network impact and creates peace of mind when delivering large events across the enterprise.

For more details on the benefits of our Network Readiness Test for your ECDN, read the Solution Brief .

 

The post Network Testing for Live Video: What You Need to Know appeared first on Kollective Technology .

To view our Partner blog, click here

Webinar Recap: The Future of Enterprise Communications is Hybrid

CMMA Blog

During a period of unprecedented disruption to how enterprises communicate, live video has become an integral tool for keeping engagement high and employees connected. As businesses begin planning for the eventual return to the office, the role of video will again shift.

In our recent webinar The Future of Enterprise Communications is Hybrid, Greg Allen, Sr. Director of Customer Success at Kollective moderated a conversation with Ben Chodor, enterprise communications expert and President of Intrado Digital Media and Eric Nguyen, Chief Product Officer of Kollective to discuss this shift and the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead.

The changing role of video in enterprise communications

People have become accustomed to using video on a daily basis and attending internal events, large or small, via a webcam. Greg Allen started off the discussion by asking how the use of video is changing in the enterprise.

Ben Chodor noted that as people return to the office or continue to work from home, they will expect video to remain an option. He went on to say, “We’ve done a year and three months of video via a webcam and it’s time to add some production value back,” the challenge of mixing studio quality video with video conferencing makes this “the most exciting time in the world to be in the video business.”

Leadership has also become more comfortable in front of the camera, Eric Nguyen explained, “communicating at a higher cadence” with their employees. The “spectrum of live video communications” has evolved and he is seeing customers find a balance between utilizing high production events and the more casual and frequent meetings and live events to connect with their workforce.

What to expect when employees return to office

In PwC’s January US Remote Work Survey , 75% of employers anticipated at least 50% of their workforce will be back in the office by July. The hybrid workplace is fast approaching, and Greg Allen asked what that will look like and how video can be used to “bridge that gap” for the hybrid workforce.

The return to office has a lot of grey areas at the moment and setting expectation or deadlines in an ever-evolving situation has led many companies to plan for a gradual return using the hybrid model, Eric Nguyen shared. The hybrid office will be a “more fluid model” which will require all events to have a virtual component to reach the entire workforce.

Pre-COVID many believed adding a virtual aspect to a live event would diminish the event as Ben Chodor experienced, but “now we’ve learned that having something virtual does not cannibalize your physical event, it enhances it.” Live video can be used to provide similar experiences to the audience whether they are able to attend in-person or viewing it virtually. Reaching people where they are is also made possible with video as content is accessible “live, on-demand, simulated live, a million different ways.”

Tools to help your team effectively engage your workforce

Maintaining employee engagement has been one of the largest challenges during the pandemic. Greg Allen asked what tools and considerations should be taken into account around engagement as we move into a hybrid scenario.

Connecting with people over video will never be the same as in person but one positive outcome Ben Chodor noticed was that engagement with international teams grew, “I think it’s made the whole world just a little bit smaller because we’re doing this.”

Collaboration has also seen massive change and the technology developed to facilitate it virtually is evolving at a rapid pace. As Eric Nguyen put it, “Nothing will ever beat sitting down, face-to-face discussing things, but the thing is, technology can get us close.”

As we move towards a hybrid workforce, Ben Chodor believes engagement and collaboration will require the incorporation of more tools like artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to bridge the gap. He sees incredible opportunity in finding ways to engage with a virtual and a physical audience, simultaneously.

How to optimize your network to ensure reliable live video delivery

Ensuring a good user experience for every employee no matter their location without straining your network is a challenge. Greg Allen asked how businesses can prepare their network to deliver high quality live video.

Utilizing an Enterprise Content Delivery Network (ECDN) powered by browser-based peering, Eric Nguyen outlined, is key to optimizing your network and delivering high-quality live video at scale. Without an ECDN, if thousands of employees are pulling a high-definition stream the network bandwidth would be overwhelmed, leading to a poor user experience.

“As an organization that does virtual events and owns one of the best streaming platforms on the market, delivering high quality video is not just important, it is critical,” Ben Chodor shared. Using an ECDN to deliver live events ensures that every user has a good experience, no matter where they are.

Watch The Future of Enterprise Communications is Hybrid webinar on-demand.

The post Webinar Recap: The Future of Enterprise Communications is Hybrid appeared first on Kollective Technology .

To view our Partner blog, click here

Microsoft 365 Video Streaming Updates: What We Know Today

CMMA Blog

With a mission to “to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more,” Microsoft is constantly updating their products and adding new features to make this empowerment a reality. And while these updates benefit the end user, it often causes a bit of confusion about what it means, who it is available to, when, how and more. After a few conversations with the Microsoft Teams and Stream product teams, we took a crack at answering the questions our customers might have when it comes to the Microsoft Teams Video Streaming updates.

What we know today

Microsoft Teams Live Events – Still the Gold Standard

Today, if our customers and prospects are looking to run a live event, or even a large one-to-many video-based meeting, a Teams Live Event is the best choice. Whether they are running it with a webcam and PowerPoint, or using an external encoder, this provides them with both the tools and the enterprise content delivery network (ECDN) integration to successfully deliver and scale their event. All workflows will remain the same, ensuring you still can take advantage of the delivery mechanism you know and trust.

Microsoft Teams Meetings with Overflow

Microsoft Teams has expanded its view-only meeting experience to 20,000 people. That means organizations with Office 365 E3/A3 and E5/A5 plans can host up to 300 interactive meeting attendees before the experience becomes view-only for new joiners. Interactive attendees enjoy all the same functionalities of a normal Teams Meeting, while overflow attendees can comment in chat, but do not have voice capabilities. At current, Teams Meetings with Overflow does not support ECDN capabilities, so Kollective’s recommendation here is that if scaling within your network or bandwidth is a concern, a Teams Live Event is still the right option for video events of this size. The good news is that Kollective will scale Teams Meetings with Overflow with the upcoming release of the Microsoft OnePlayer (see below).

Upcoming Changes

The Microsoft OnePlayer

Microsoft will be replacing Azure Media Player (AMP) with the new OnePlayer in the Teams and Stream client and web apps. OnePlayer’s advanced technology will further improve video playback and enable smarter integrations with ECDN applications. Anywhere you see video will take advantage of this new architecture and can be loaded the Kollective software development kit (SDK). When this is released, Teams Meetings with Overflow will be delivered for all attendees over the overflow threshold. In addition, the new player will load Kollective inside of the Teams Mobile App, giving as a larger footprint and allowing additional scale for our customers.

Microsoft Webinar

When it is released, Webinar will offer organizations another option to stream live video to view-only attendees. Like Teams Meetings with Overflow, these users can ask questions in chat but do not have voice or screenshare capabilities. Another Microsoft product leveraging OnePlayer, ECDN partners will deliver video to attendees at scale.

Microsoft Stream 2.0

Microsoft is breaking down the Stream silo and integrating it into the OneDrive/SharePoint ecosystem. Once rolled out, users can embed, manage and send a Stream video the same way you would any other file using the same M365 permissions. Although Stream will remain its own product with dedicated video interface, all recorded meetings will be stored in OneDrive and can be accessed by all participants. ECDN functionality stays the same.

The post Microsoft 365 Video Streaming Updates: What We Know Today appeared first on Kollective Technology .

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