Network best practices for Teams town halls and live events with third‑party providers

🚨 The Signal: Microsoft advises reviewing network configurations for Teams town halls and live events, especially with third-party secure web gateways. Unoptimized networks can cause significant streaming quality issues, impacting event reliability and user experience.

The Impact

Organizations using Teams for large events with third-party network security solutions face a risk of degraded service quality.

• Event Organizers: Risk of disrupted town halls and live events due to poor streaming.
• Attendees: May experience low-quality video, buffering, or inability to join events.
• IT Administrators: Need to review and potentially reconfigure network security policies.
• Leadership: Potential for reputational damage from failed or poor-quality events.

The Action

1. Review and validate Microsoft 365 endpoint allowlists for Teams real-time media traffic.
2. Ensure network routing for Teams media traffic bypasses secure web gateways, proxies, or traffic inspection solutions where possible.
3. Consult Microsoft's official network guidance for Teams to optimize network paths for live events.
4. Test network configurations with pilot Teams town halls or live events to identify and resolve issues proactively.

Domain: Teams · Impact: medium · Workload: Teams