I noticed that on the M365 roadmap Restart live events has launched ! Interesting !

Its something I’ve seen requested many times from when live events was launched and every live event i produce its always the thought of once its started you cant restart are you sure moment! Well not anymore lets take a look. I did find locating the restart event button a bit hidden at first.

From looking it seems you can restart an event thats live and also end an event and then restart it again. The restarting a live event seems to mean the attendees wont see an event has ended message and have to re join again whereas ending an event and then restarting it show a message then the event has ended and required attendees rejoin with the same link. Perhaps restarting an event thats live is best from an attendee point of view so be careful of this. In both case restarting an event warns that any recording, transcripts is lost and producers and presenters are forced to rejoin.

Schedule Live Event

So in the Teams Desktop Client i scheduled a live event

Used default settings and hit schedule

Join Live Event

I joined as producer added some content and my video

Set the Stage

I turned on video and shared a powerpoint and added the content to the stage in the queue and pressed Send live

Once ready i pressed Start and i first noticed the message that you cant restart the live events has gone.

Were Live

I pressed continue to start and were Live!

End Event then restart – option 1

I pressed End and it mentions i can restart an events after it has ended by pressing the restart button 🙂 so i continue to end the event

Hmmmmm where is the restart button!

My video & content has gone and it has “The live event has ended” but i cant find restart button.

Restart Event – Found it !

Found it ! its under the … of course it is

i press restart event and get this message

So restarting the end will mean that any on demand, recording, captions or transcripts that had taken place wont be saved and producers and presenters will need to join again.

I click restart

and i see a checking if we can restart your event message. Then the windows closes and im back to my calendar in Teams so i join the live event again. So your kicked out. producers and presenters must rejoin again.

Re join my restarted event and start again!

Its as if the first event i started, went live, ended and restarted never existed i mean i have restarted the event and i want to start again.

I checked the live event urls and they seem to be the same as well so you can restart a live event now but you wont be able to get anything back from before you restarted the event including recordings etc. You have to start the event again which is the point but dont think you can get recording or data before you hit end and restart.

You can restart event during a live event – option 2 it seems

I also tested restarting an event that’s live and i didnt end the event and both scenarios worked.

This way looks better for attendees as they dont need to rejoin it says.

Audience View of a restarted event thats been ended and restarted – option 1

View Event live here in browser

Ended the Event and audience see the normal end message

Restart Event

Audience member seem to have to also join back into the event but using the same url which is good and i see the message the live event hasnt start. i started it and all was good.

Option 2 – Audience view of a restart event that’s live

I did try a audience member viewing event whilst is was stopped then restarted the event to see if the event would restart without the audience member having to re join but that didn’t seem to work and so i had to re join the event again so that’s one thing to remember for your viewers.

Microsoft Live Event guide – Which mentions restarting as well now

This mention that only producers and presenters would need to rejoin not attendees. listed here

Teams will then verify that the event can be restarted. If Teams can successfully restart your live event, the producers and presenters will be disconnected, while attendees watching the event will see a waiting screen informing them that the event will begin shortly. Producers and presenters will need to rejoin and start the event again.

The behaviour was different when i restarted a live event and didnt end its technical i restarted a live one and didnt end it so makes sense but i didnt see the exact message but ill keep testing.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/office/produce-a-live-event-using-teams-591bd694-121d-405c-b26d-730315e45a22#:~:text=%20Restart%20your%20live%20event%20%201%20Select,pop%20up%2C%20select%20Restart%20to%20confirm.%20More%20