For a Town Hall, staff don't see the option to "allow mic for attendees" or "allow camera for attendees" - it's greyed out. How do I turn it on?

Question

For a Town Hall, staff don't see the option to "allow mic for attendees" or "allow camera for attendees" - it's greyed out. How do I turn it on?

Anonymous

When the staff-member organizing the Town Hall goes to their calendar and clicks on meeting options, the items to "Allow mic for attendees" and "allow camera for attendees" are greyed out.

Global Meetings policies has everyone under "who can present", has IP video enabled....

what settings am I missing? What might I do? Are these options only available for Webinars? (and if so...?!)

2 answers

Your answer

Answer 1

Agree with Matt. Our Town Council meetings specifically have periods of public participation that up until recently allowed citizens to phone in and speak to Council. Not all citizens are comfortable with interactive computer functionality. Additionally, we cannot use the Q&A function because it is not the most efficient way to communicate questions to Council in a live meeting. For example, staff have to read out loud to Council the posts in the Q&A, in order to get the post and Council's response into the record. It makes no sense to disable this functionality.

Answer 2

JimmyYang-MSFT 58,646 Moderator

Hi @Anonymous

This option greyed out is set by design.

Town Hall is different from webniars, Town halls are a one-to-many experience. Focus stays primarily on presenters and shared content while attendees watch. By default, attendee cameras and mics will be turned off when they join a town hall. However, attendees can still engage through other apps and services, like Q&A, where they can post or respond to questions during the event. To learn more, see Attend a town hall in Microsoft Teams.

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JimmyYang-MSFT 58,646 Reputation points Moderator

2024-01-12T07:17:14.5466667+00:00

@Anonymous It has been a while, how is everything going? If you have any update about this issue, please feel free to post back.
KOHLER Roland 10 Reputation points

2024-03-04T09:47:57.53+00:00

If there is no possibility for attendees to use Mic and Cam during Town halls, why is there the option to enable/disable it?
Matt 10 Reputation points

2024-10-31T17:18:03.2333333+00:00

This functionality is backwards from a real world perspective. Think about the concept of a town hall... the WHOLE POINT is to have a leader be available to everyone for direct question and answer. The audience of a Town Hall meeting might be measured in less than 100 or it may be 10,000, still the concept of a Town Hall is that the leader is available for direct Q&A. Think a company All Hands meeting for example.

A webinar on the other hand needs to handle a very large audience and have a tightly controlled Q&A process. This is typically used by a marketing or sales team to present information to participants that are largely passive. They may engage on a Q&A message board, but it's not appropriate to have them engage directly with the presenter. An example would be pitching a new product or idea to an entire customer base that registers.

The people on the Teams product team are confused about basic real-world communication models. Further, the option clearly exists inside the UI so someone thought this was important to include.

Very frustrating....

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For a Town Hall, staff don't see the option to "allow mic for attendees" or "allow camera for attendees" - it's greyed out. How do I turn it on?

2 answers

Your answer