Graduation is a major milestone in most people’s lives, and due to the COVID-19 pandemic, many students will miss out on the chance to celebrate their accomplishments with a traditional ceremony this year. However, virtual versions can still go ahead, and an arena-sized audience can attend on Microsoft Teams.

From early May through July 1st, holders of a Microsoft Office 365 A1 faculty license, which is free to educational institutions, can run Teams Live Events with up to 20,000 attendees at no added cost. The standard limit for Live Events is 10,000. License holders will be able to hold 50 concurrent live events, lasting up to 16 hours, during that timeframe, which might prove useful for alumni events or conferences as well.

Once you’ve set up the Teams app in Slack, you’ll be able to start a call by simply using the command /teams-call. You’ll also be able to see who’s already in a meeting before you hop in and also join calls from Outlook or Google Calendar reminders in Slack.

However, you can’t take part in Teams calls entirely within Slack, at least for the time being. If you join one from a Slack channel, the call will open up in Teams instead. In addition, you’ll be able to dial phone numbers via Zoom, Jabber, WebEx, RingCentral, and Dialpad directly within Slack. That might make getting things done while you’re stuck at home a little easier.