Crisis Communication with Microsoft Teams How To Use Microsoft Teams For Crisis Communication?

The CEO wants to announce important news. Department directors need to organize a Q&A session. There is a crisis (such as the latest COVID-19) and the board must focus on rapid communication. Whatever the case, an ordinary message on a forum or internal social media may not be enough. It won’t usually get much engagement and could even go unnoticed.

Whenever you need to address an important situation, a live session (or, as some would prefer, a webinar) comes in handy. In this article, I’ll show you how to address all the scenarios mentioned above (and more) using Microsoft Teams.

This is a part of an article series we created to help you implement a remote-first work environment with the help of MS Teams and Azure. Here you’ll find valuable tips to keep your business secure and efficient. See the additional articles here:

1. How to boost and measure remote work productivity?
2. How to ensure your virtual meetings are productive?
3. Azure AD WAP: How to set up secure remote access in two hours
4. How to run a delivery team in the era of remote work?

Coronavirus vs Predica. Our crisis communication case study

As we all know, in March 2020 coronavirus hit Europe (and other parts of the world), and made a huge impact on a lot of companies. We wanted to react fast in response to the sudden change in the business environment. This includes letting all employees know what the next steps for the organization are going to be.

To make that happen, we carried out a few live sessions in Microsoft Teams.

We did it all in a hurry, but still, we managed to get around 150 attendees together (out of 250 total). As it is impossible to get everyone to attend live (due to calls with clients, etc.), those who couldn’t attend got access to a replay.

Image 1. Producer view during a live session on coronavirus

So, let’s go over the steps you need to take to organize your own event in Microsoft Teams, from technical preparations to handling communication.

Microsoft Teams – what’s it all about?

If you haven’t come across Microsoft Teams yet, it is a multi-functional tool for collaboration. You can easily organize calls, share your files, create groups, or extend the functionalities by connecting it with other apps.

Microsoft keeps investing heavily in this service. In fact, this is the first place to go if you want to give your Skype for Business an upgrade.

And to be honest – I love it! The number of possibilities it offers and its ease of use are exactly the things I was missing in other tools of that kind.

If you want to read more about Microsoft Teams, you might want to check out these links:

• The official site of Microsoft Teams
• Team collaboration using Azure DevOps
• Check out how to connect an IoT device with a button for ordering drinks that sends a message on Microsoft Teams.

Image 2. Microsoft Teams is available on a range of devices (source)

Our object of interest – live sessions

Since we’ve gone through the basics, it’s time for our special guest. The live session!

You might be wondering, what is the difference between a regular call and a live meeting?

When creating a live meeting, you choose by email who is able to speak. Other people that join the broadcast will only be able to raise questions in the chat window.

In addition, as a producer, you decide who and whose screen are displayed to the viewers and when. This gives you more control over what is happening and you don’t have to worry about interruptions, e.g. with an unmuted microphone.

To effectively conduct a live meeting, you must take the following steps:

1. Create a live event in Microsoft Teams
2. Inform everyone about the event
3. Carry out a rehearsal with presenters (you may skip this step if it’s crisis communication and you have to act fast)
4. Publish a replay to make it easily accessible for everyone
5. Congratulate yourself!

Now we have our to-do list, let’s go through each of these points.

Create an internal live event in Microsoft Teams

This step is very easy and basic configuration takes no longer than a few minutes at most. Here’s what you have to do.

1. Go to the calendar and create a new Teams Live Event.

Demo 1. Creating a live event via the calendar

2. Set the date and title, and choose the presenters. Don’t fill the description for now. When it comes to presenters, you choose everyone who is going to speak during the broadcast.

A producer can present too, but this role serves a different purpose – they decide what is going to be displayed for viewers. This way, presenters can focus only on their message and don’t have to worry about anything else. Exactly like it happens on TV!

For that reason, if you’re presenting yourself, it is good practice to find somebody else to produce the event. Don’t worry, being a producer is not complicated.

Demo 2. Defining the details of the event

3. Choose the Org-wide option and configure the meeting as you want. By default, the Q&A is unchecked, so make sure that you select this feature, even if you don’t necessarily need it. You are going to be able to turn it off and on at any point during the broadcast.

Demo 3. Setting live event permissions

4. Click the schedule button, copy the link for attendees and save it for later. Once you schedule the session, an automatic invite (almost identical to a regular Outlook meeting invite) is sent to presenters. Leave the rest of the options as they are.

Image 3. Getting the attendee link

A useful note

If you want to add more presenters, you can do it at any time and it won’t impact your guest URL.

Demo 4. Adding presenters to the live event