Town Hall event in Viva Engage community: Does it automatically send an invitation (email/calendar) to all community members?

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Town Hall event in Viva Engage community: Does it automatically send an invitation (email/calendar) to all community members?

EdS 20

For upcoming global events, we plan to create Microsoft Teams Town Hall events. Town Halls can be created directly in Microsoft Teams, or inside a Viva Engage community.
Creating them in Viva Engage is attractive because people can watch the event directly in it and it drives adoption and visibility of Viva Engage as a communications channel.

My key concern is about email / calendar invitations: When you create a Town Hall event in a Viva Engage community, does it automatically send an invitation (email/calendar) to all community members?
I'd rather not, hence my question. :)

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Answer 1

Hani-Ng 9,825 Microsoft External Staff Moderator

Hi EdS

Thank you for reaching out to the Q&A Forum.

Based on my research and my testing, creating a Town Hall event in a Viva Engage community does not automatically send email or calendar invitations to all members. Invitations are sent only to organizers, co-organizers, and presenters, with time zone adjustments and updates.

For more detail information, you can see: Organize a live event in Viva Engage - Microsoft Support

Community members instead receive in-app notifications, such as a banner in the Conversations tab and a bell alert when the event begins. To invite members via email or calendar, you must manually share the event link through Outlook, Teams, or other channels.

This approach encourages engagement within Viva Engage without overwhelming inboxes. For broader reach, hosting the town hall directly in Microsoft Teams provides more direct invitation options.

I hope this information proves helpful!

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EdS 20 Reputation points

2026-02-25T16:21:45.83+00:00

Hi,

Thanks a lot for taking the time to answer me.

I have a follow‑up question: Is there a way to avoid notifications in Viva Engage when creating Town Hall events?

Context:
For our global events, we usually broadcast via three parallel feeds (or three Town Halls). We do this because we are a large organization with 18 official languages, and each feed (Town Hall) can support a maximum of six languages for live subtitles. As a result, we send one single Outlook invitation to the entire organization, with the links to the three feeds included in the body of the email, so people can choose the feed that corresponds to their language.
In order to avoid confusing employees with notifications for feeds they won’t join (because those feeds don’t cover their language), I would like to understand whether there is a way to avoid notifications in Viva Engage.
I noticed that Town Halls can be set up as test events, and that in this case they do not appear in the community’s Events list, which I assume would also disable notifications. My main interest in using Town Halls in Viva Engage is to direct people toward Viva Engage as a channel, while keeping notifications clear and non‑confusing for a multilingual audience.
Hani-Ng 9,825 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff Moderator

2026-02-26T11:26:38.1366667+00:00

Hi EdS

Regarding your question about keeping, it quiet in Viva Engage, I would like to share my perspective on how this typically works

On using "Test Events"

In my experience, those test modes are usually designed strictly for producers and presenters to check their setup. Often, regular attendees don't have permission to view "Test" events at all, so using that setting could risk blocking your audience from seeing the stream.

On avoiding notifications

From what I've seen, Viva Engage does not usually blast out a notification just because an event is created. The emails and push alerts typically happen only if you choose to "Announce" the post after creating it.

If you create the events but don't use the Announcement feature, they should just appear quietly in the community feed without pinging everyone. Users would likely only see them if they happened to be scrolling through the community manually.

Since notification behaviors can sometimes vary depending on how your specific tenant is configured, I’d recommend doing a quick dry run with a colleague that create a sample event without announcing it and see if they get an alert, just to be on the safe side before the big day.

I hope this information proves helpful!
EdS 20 Reputation points

2026-02-26T12:51:27.3833333+00:00

Thank you so much for taking the time to answer me, this is very clear!

Answer 2

When you create a Town Hall event in a Viva Engage community, the event is published and calendar invites are automatically generated for organizers and sent to co-organizers and speakers directly from Teams. However, it does not specify whether invitations are sent to all community members by default. Therefore, if you prefer not to send invitations to all community members, you may need to manage this setting or process separately.

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Town Hall event in Viva Engage community: Does it automatically send an invitation (email/calendar) to all community members?

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