Microsoft Teams: town hall organizers, co-organizers, presenters can join the event to preview as attendee

Updated September 10, 2025: We have updated the timeline. Thank you for your patience.

Organizers, co-organizers, and presenters in a Microsoft Teams town hall will soon be able to join and view the event from an attendee's perspective.

This feature will be available for customers who have access to town hall in Teams for Windows or Mac desktop, Teams for the web, or Teams for iOS/Android.

This message is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 484126.

When this will happen

Targeted Release: We will begin rolling out late May 2025 (previously mid-May) and expect to complete by late June 2025 (previously late May).

General Availability (Worldwide): We will begin rolling out late June 2025 (previously mid-June) and expect to complete by late October 2025 (previously late July).

How this will affect your organization

After joining the town hall green room, event participants will be able to access the attendee view by joining from a different Teams platform. For example, an organizer who joins the green room from Teams for Windows desktop can access the attendee view from either Teams for the web or Teams for iOS/Android. Also, a select set of town hall features (such as Q&A) will be disabled just for the organizer, co-organizer, or presenter in the attendee experience they are monitoring. This feature has no impact to the broader attendee experience or on organizers, co-organizers, and presenters in the green room.

1. Primary use case: An organizer, co-organizer, or presenter has joined the event and opens the event again in another platform to preview as attendee. They will have a new option to Preview event as attendee below the options to Add this device or Transfer to this device. (Mobile and desktop/web screens shown)

2. Secondary use case: Organizer/Co-Organizer/Presenter has not joined the event as their designated role yet but first chooses to join as attendee. On desktop and web, they will see a pre-join screen with a new drop-down menu with the option to Preview as attendee. On mobile, they will have the option to Preview as attendee under the More join options. (Mobile and desktop/web screens shown)

This feature will be available by default for town hall organizers, co-organizers, and presenters to configure.

What you need to do to prepare

This rollout will happen automatically by the specified dates with no admin action required before the rollout. Review your current configuration to assess the impact on your organization. You may want to notify your users about this change and update any relevant documentation.

Before the GA rollout, we will update this post with new documentation.