Livestreaming App Overview

Livestreaming

1. What it is

Livestreaming lets your company broadcast live video to the entire organization — or a targeted audience — directly inside MangoApps. Typical uses are town halls, all-hands meetings, leadership Q&A sessions, training briefings, and safety announcements. Viewers participate through live chat, upvote-Q&A, and polls while watching. Streams are recorded for on-demand playback.

• Enablement: Livestreaming is a pay-as-you-go app billed per broadcast minute. It is available to every tenant without a separate license purchase; an admin enables it from Apps Marketplace.
• What it is not: Livestreaming is a one-to-many broadcast. It is not a two-way video call or a remote-expert session — those are handled by Live Assist.

2. Standing it up

1. Go to Apps Marketplace and enable Livestreaming.
2. Open Apps → Livestreaming → Settings. Review the defaults (see §5). The most important decision is Who can schedule and host streams — the default is Admins and app admins only.
3. Confirm a streaming provider is connected. The Settings page shows a Provider card. Most tenants use the managed Mux account (no setup needed). Enterprise tenants that need their own provider can configure one under Admin → Integrations.
4. Check the Secure playback badge on the provider card. If it reads Public playback, any person who obtains the stream URL can watch — even outside your organization. Contact MangoApps support to enable signed playback.
5. Schedule a test stream from the Streams tab and walk through the host console to confirm the workflow. Your users will see a Livestreams widget on their home dashboard showing any live or upcoming streams.

What silently does nothing until you also configure it: the “Auto-post recordings to the Communications feed” setting requires the Communications app’s own Livestreaming — allow posting to the feed contributor switch to be on. If the contributor switch is off, the auto-post is skipped silently regardless of the Livestreaming setting.

3. How it fits together

Streams and their lifecycle

A stream (the central object) moves through a fixed sequence: Scheduled → Live → Ended → Recorded. A stream can also land in Failed if the provider refuses the go-live request.

The host creates a stream by choosing a title, an optional description, a scheduled start time, and whether to record. A host is anyone allowed by the Who can schedule and host streams setting — by default only admins and app admins. The host can designate another user as the stream’s host at creation time.

Example: your HR director creates a stream titled “Q3 All-Hands” scheduled for Friday at 2 PM, with recording on. That stream appears on the company Calendar (if the Calendar integration is enabled), in the Livestreams dashboard widget, and in the Streams list. On Friday the host opens the Host console, which displays the RTMPS ingest URL and stream key. The host points OBS, vMix, or any RTMPS-capable encoder at that URL and clicks Go live. Viewers watch at the stream’s watch page. After the broadcast, the host clicks End stream. Once the provider finishes processing, the status changes to Recorded and the recording is available for on-demand playback on the same page.

Roles

Three levels of access govern who can do what:

• Viewer — any user in the organization (or in the targeted audience) can watch, chat, ask questions, and vote in polls.
• Host — can schedule and host streams. Controlled by the Who can schedule and host streams setting. Admins and app admins can always host regardless of this setting.
• Moderator — can manage a specific stream: open the host console, go live, end the stream, remove chat messages, mark questions answered or dismissed, launch and close polls, and use the AI features (cluster questions, generate recap). Moderator access is granted to the stream’s host, the stream’s creator, any business admin, and any Livestreaming app admin.

Audience participation

Three real-time features run alongside the video player:

• Live chat — text messages that appear for every viewer in real time. Moderators can remove individual messages (the message is hidden from all viewers immediately; the audit trail is preserved). Chat closes automatically when the stream ends. Messages are capped at 500 characters. A rate limit prevents flood spam.
• Upvote-Q&A — viewers submit questions (up to 1,000 characters) and upvote others’. Questions are sorted by votes so the most popular rise to the top. The host marks them Answered or Dismissed. Dismissed questions are hidden from all viewers. New questions close when the stream ends, but upvoting existing questions remains open afterward so a late viewer can still push a question up the host’s follow-up list.
• Polls — moderators create a poll with a question and at least two options, then launch it live. Each viewer gets one vote per poll. Per-option results are hidden from a viewer until they have voted or the poll is closed, so results cannot bias the vote. The host can close a poll at any time to lock in results.

Connected apps

Livestreaming automatically wires into other apps when enabled in Settings:

• Calendar — a calendar event is created when a stream is scheduled, kept in sync on edits, and removed if the stream is canceled.
• Broadcast — a draft “We’re live” broadcast is created when a stream goes live. The host reviews and publishes it.
• Communications feed — a “recording available” post is published to the News Feed when the recording finishes (subject to the Communications contributor switch).

AI features

Three AI-powered features help hosts and viewers:

• Cluster questions (host console) — groups and de-duplicates the Q&A list into themes so a host fielding many questions can see the topics that matter most.
• Generate recap (stream detail page) — produces a post-event summary from the audience interaction (chat, Q&A, polls) for employees who missed the stream.
• Catch me up (watch page, live streams only) — gives a late-joining viewer a summary of what has happened so far, based on the audience activity up to that point. Each viewer can request this once per minute.

4. Running it

Scheduling a stream

1. Go to Apps → Livestreaming → Streams and click Schedule stream.
2. Enter a title, optional description, scheduled start time, and host. Check or uncheck Record this stream (pre-filled from the tenant default).
3. Click Save. The stream appears in the Upcoming section of the dashboard and, if the Calendar integration is on, on the company Calendar.

Going live

1. Open the stream and click Host console. The console displays the RTMPS ingest URL and stream key.
2. Configure your encoder (OBS, vMix, or any RTMPS-capable software) with the displayed URL and key.
3. Start your encoder, then click Go live. The status changes to Live and all users (or the targeted audience) receive a “Live now” notification with a link to the watch page.
4. The console shows a real-time viewer count, a status badge, and the End stream button.

If the provider refuses the go-live, the stream moves to Failed and the error reason is displayed on the console. The host can click Retry to try again. A failed stream does not appear on the company dashboard or in the upcoming list — it is visible only to users who can manage it.

A 15-minute reminder notification is sent to the host before a scheduled stream starts. If the stream targets a specific audience, those audience members also receive the reminder.

During the broadcast

• The host monitors the live viewer count and status from the Host console.
• Moderators can remove chat messages, mark Q&A questions answered or dismissed, and launch or close polls — all from the watch page or console.
• Cluster questions groups the Q&A into themes for the host.
• Viewers who join late can use Catch me up on the watch page.

Ending and reviewing

1. Click End stream on the host console. The stream moves to Ended. A live stream cannot be edited or canceled — end it first.
2. Once the provider finishes processing (automatic), the status becomes Recorded and the recording is available for on-demand playback on the stream’s page. If recording was turned off for this stream, no recording is kept.
3. The host can use Generate recap to create a summary of the audience interaction.
4. To delete a stream, open it and click Delete. Deleting also removes the mirrored Calendar event if one was created.

Analytics

Go to Apps → Livestreaming → Analytics (admin and app admin only). The page shows total streams, recorded streams, and total broadcast minutes. Broadcast minutes are billed per stream (each stream’s minutes are rounded up individually). A recent-streams table lists individual events with their duration and status.

5. Settings

All settings are at Apps → Livestreaming → Settings (admin and app admin only).

Hosting & recording

Setting	Default	What it changes
Who can schedule and host streams?	Admins and app admins only	Controls who can create and host new streams. Any user lets every employee schedule a stream. Admins and app admins can always host regardless.
Record streams by default	On	Pre-fills the “Record this stream” checkbox when scheduling. The host can override it per stream. Recorded streams are available for on-demand playback; unrecorded streams are not.
Auto-caption recordings (AI transcription)	On	Requests AI-generated captions on recorded streams.

Connected apps

Setting	Default	What it changes
Add scheduled streams to the company Calendar	On	Creates and syncs a Calendar event for each scheduled stream.
Draft a ‘We’re live’ Broadcast when a stream goes live	On	Creates a draft Broadcast when the host goes live. The host still publishes it manually.
Auto-post recordings to the Communications feed	Off	Posts a “recording available” entry to the News Feed when the recording finishes. Also requires the Communications app’s contributor switch for Livestreaming to be on.

6. More help

• Livestreaming FAQ — specific setup and operating questions, limits, and troubleshooting.
• Ask AI — the assistant answers questions about Livestreaming from these articles.