Hosting Workshop with multiple external clients

Question

Hi,

Do town hall invites share attendees info with each other? And can I see who is presently watching in the live meeting?

I am hosting a workshop with multiple external clients, I would like to keep their emails private from each other, is this ensured in town hall? I dont want to use webinar as the attendee list has been decided and limited to 20. I like the look of the professional invite from town hall but is this the best option for my scenario?

Sophie

Answer 1

Hello @Sophie F

Based on my understanding, your main concern is whether attendees in a Town Hall event can see each other's information, such as their email addresses.

If this is your concern, please note that Town Hall does not currently provide a feature to hide attendee information from other participants. If keeping attendee email addresses private is a requirement, a standard Teams meeting with the Hide attendee list feature may be a better option. Therefore, Town Hall may not be the most suitable choice if attendee privacy is your primary objective.

Additionally, as the organizer, you can view attendee information during the live event and monitor who is currently watching the Town Hall.

For external clients, if you would like to restrict attendance to a specific group of users and prevent unauthorized users from joining the Town Hall, the attendees would typically need to be invited and configured appropriately within your organization's access settings. This helps provide greater control over event access and ensures that only the intended participants can join the event.

I completely understand the appeal of the professional invitation and event experience that Town Hall provides. However, based on the scenario you described, a regular Teams meeting with the Hide attendee list feature may provide a better balance between attendee privacy. However, unlike Town Hall, it does not offer the same level of attendee management controls and so on.

Ultimately, each meeting type has its own strengths and limitations. While Teams meetings offer better attendee privacy options, Town Hall provides a more professional event experience and greater control over the audience. Webinars offer a professional registration and invitation experience; however, they are not designed to restrict attendance to a predefined list of specific users in the same way as a limited-access Town Hall. As a result, the best option will depend on whether your priority is attendee privacy, audience management, attendee restrictions, attendee interaction, or the overall event experience.

Please feel free to let me know if you have any further concerns about this matter.

Answer 2

Town hall is the better fit if attendee privacy between external clients is the priority.

• In Teams town halls, attendees are in a one-to-many experience focused on speakers and shared content.
• Attendees can’t turn on their mics or cameras, and they can participate through Q&A.
• In a town hall, the organizer view is different from a normal meeting. During the event, the attendee side is shown as Attendees watching event, not a full participant list visible like a standard meeting.

For attendee privacy:

• The provided context does not indicate that town hall attendees can see each other’s email addresses.
• Separate Outlook meeting behavior shows that external users outside the tenant cannot see responses to a meeting invitation, but that applies to Outlook meeting invitations, not specifically to Teams town hall attendee visibility.

For seeing who is currently watching live:

• The organizer experience in town hall shows Attendees watching event.
• If attendance details are needed, an attendance list can be downloaded:
  1. During the meeting: People in meeting controls > More actions > Download attendance list.
  2. After the meeting: Teams > Calendar > select the past meeting > Recap > Download the attendance CSV.

For the scenario described:

• Town hall is designed for large-scale, mostly consumption-based events.
• Since the attendee list is fixed and limited to 20, the context does not confirm that town hall provides a specific attendee-email privacy guarantee for that workshop scenario.
• What is supported is that town hall minimizes attendee-to-attendee visibility compared with regular meetings, and the organizer can obtain attendance reporting.

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References:

• Get started with town hall in Microsoft Teams
• Town hall meeting "Show participants" button is missing - Microsoft Q&A
• Attendees can see others’ responses to a meeting invitation