Town Hall presentation question

Dear @John McCartney, 

Good day, and I appreciate the clear explanation of your concern. I understand why the “0 views” counter raised concerns, especially since identifying the highest number of attendees during a Town hall is important for your reporting. 

After reviewing the screenshot and the behavior you observed, I would like to clarify what that “views” counter represents and outline the correct ways to track attendance and peak engagement. 

The “Views” label comes from the SharePoint or OneDrive video player and applies only to the Town hall recording, not the live event. A view is counted when someone plays the recording on demand, even briefly. During the live broadcast, this counter usually does not change and may stay at zero until the recording is viewed after publishing. There is no meeting or invite setting that enables this counter to reflect live attendance, as it is intended only for recording analytics. 

• How to see live attendee count and identify the peak during the event: 

To see live attendee numbers and identify the peak during the Town hall, organizers and co-organizers can use Town hall insights in Microsoft Teams: 

Open Teams and go to the Calendar. 

Open the Town hall event. 

Select Manage event. 

Go to Reports. 

Select View more analytics. 

Within the insights dashboard, the Attendee Count section shows how the number of connected viewers changes over time. The highest point on this timeline reflects the peak number of attendees. 

Notes:  

Real time insights are available to organizers and co organizers and support events up to 3,000 attendees by default. 

If “View event insights” is not visible, please confirm that you are listed as the organizer or co-organizer and that Town hall capacity and licensing are correctly configured in your tenant. 

• How to determine the peak after the event has ended: 

If real time insights are not available or if you only need the peak number afterward, the following options can help: 

Option 1: Attendance and engagement report 

Open the completed Town hall in Teams Calendar. 

Select Manage event. 

Go to Reports and download the attendance report. 

This report includes exact join and leave times for each attendee. Using these timestamps, you can calculate maximum concurrent attendance by processing the data in Excel or a similar tool. 

Option 2: Teams admin center reports  

The Teams administrators can access Town hall usage reports from the Teams admin center. These reports provide total attendance and recording view metrics at the event level. 

Note: If you are an end-user, please contact your IT administrator to complete these steps. 

Sign in to the Microsoft 365 admin center > Show all > Teams.

In Teams admin center, go to Analytics & reports > Select Usage reports. 

Locate and open Town hall usage report. 

Select a date range that includes the Town hall event you want to review. 

The report lists events with details such as: 

• Event name. 
• Organizer. 
• Event date. 
• Total number of attendees. 
• Recording availability and recording views. 

You can export the report to CSV or Excel for further analysis or sharing with stakeholders. 

This option is useful for overall totals and recording consumption but doesn't provide a real time or timeline based peak view comparable to the event insights dashboard. 

Additional information is available in the following resources: 
Town hall insights in Microsoft Teams - Microsoft Support 

Manage meeting attendance reports in Microsoft Teams - Microsoft Support 

Microsoft Teams town hall usage report - Microsoft Teams | Microsoft Learn 

As community moderators, we kindly ask for your understanding that our access to internal development details is limited. Our primary role is to guide users toward the appropriate resources and support channels. While we may not have visibility into performing deeper backend analysis, we’ll continue doing our best to support you within the scope of our responsibilities.   

I hope this clarifies why the Views counter remained at zero and helps you identify the correct tools to track live attendance and peak engagement for future Town halls. If you have any questions or need further support, please don’t hesitate to reach out at any time.  

Thank you for your patience and understanding.  

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