Webinars on Teams

The ability to hold Webinars has been added to Microsoft Teams for all UConn faculty, staff, and students. With Webinars, users can deliver presentations to 1,000 attendees with full interactivity, plus broadcast to up to 10,000 attendees with a view-only experience. Creating a webinar is as simple as setting up a Teams meeting with extra functionality, which includes custom registration pages, more presentation options, and the ability to disable attendee chat.

What are Webinars?

Webinars are very similar to a Teams Meeting, but with several key differences in functionality. When booking a regular Teams Meeting, you can directly invite many UConn users to speak and collaborate at once. When booking a Webinar in Teams, you instead directly invite a handful of presenters. Then, after customizing your Webinar registration form, you are given a URL to send to all potential attendees via email, listserv, etc. The attendees can then fill out the form with all requested information, which is collected in a downloadable excel file.

When the time of the Webinar arrives, attendees are able to join directly through their email or through their calendar entry.

While Webinars are similar to standard Teams Meetings and Live Events, there are several key differences that make them work best in different scenarios. Here is an outline on how they compare to one another.

Why use Webinars?

When creating a Webinar, there are several new tools that set it apart from a normal Teams Meeting. When presenting a Webinar, presenters are able to disable the microphone and camera for attendees. Disabling the microphone prevents attendees from enabling their microphone, as shown below.

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The presenter's ability to disable the attendee's microphone and camera is listed among additional tools by right clicking on an attendee during the meeting.

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Since Webinars can include up to 1,000 users with full functionality, the ability to disable attendee microphones is essential.

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