Microsoft’s Microsoft 365 Roadmap updated June 30, 2026, shows that Secure Reliable Transport (SRT) ingest is rolling out for Microsoft Teams town halls on desktop and Mac clients, targeting worldwide commercial tenants. The move brings the popular open-source video transport protocol directly into the Teams ecosystem, enabling enterprise event organizers to deliver broadcast-grade video with extremely low latency and high resilience against network jitter and packet loss.
This capability marks a significant evolution from the standard RTMP ingestion that Teams Live Events and town halls have previously relied on. By adopting SRT—an industry standard backed by the SRT Alliance and used by thousands of professional broadcasting solutions—Microsoft is positioning Teams as a serious platform for high-stakes corporate communications, digital conferences, and all-hands meetings where video quality and reliability are non-negotiable.
The rollout, detailed in the roadmap under feature ID 124848 (as noted in public tracking), indicates that SRT ingest will be available to all commercial tenants with no special license requirements. The rollout is staged, beginning with general availability for the desktop client (Windows and macOS) by mid-July 2026, followed by web client support later in the year. This timeline gives IT administrators and event producers a clear window to prepare their existing SRT-enabled encoders and workflows.
What Is SRT and Why Does It Matter for Teams Town Halls?
Secure Reliable Transport is an open-source video transport protocol developed and pioneered by Haivision. It is designed to deliver low-latency, high-quality video across unpredictable public internet links. Unlike traditional protocols such as RTMP, which can be brittle in the face of packet loss or fluctuating bandwidth, SRT employs intelligent retransmission of lost packets (ARQ), forward error correction, and dynamic stream adaptation to maintain smooth video delivery.
For a Teams town hall—which may serve an audience of tens of thousands of employees or customers—the difference is tangible. Instead of forcing presenters to use webcams or basic software encoders, the SRT ingest opens the door to professional camera rigs, hardware encoders, and production switchers already widely deployed in broadcast and event industries. The result is pristine 1080p (or even 4K) video with sub-second glass-to-glass latency, all within the familiar Teams interface.
SRT also brings inherent security: all streams are encrypted using AES-128/256 encryption, meeting strict enterprise security requirements. The protocol’s built-in firewall traversal (via caller/listener handshake modes) simplifies network configuration compared to older push-based protocols, a pain point for corporate network administrators.
Timeline and Availability
According to the Microsoft 365 Roadmap entry, the SRT ingest feature will reach general availability for Windows and macOS desktop clients first, with the initial rollout wave completing by early August 2026. Web client support is expected by September 2026. Government Community Cloud (GCC) and other sovereign cloud tenants typically follow a few months later, though no specific date has been posted yet.
Importantly, this isn’t a preview or beta flag; it’s a full production release. Event organizers will see a new “SRT Ingest” option in the town hall setup workflow, where they can provide the SRT listener URL, port, and optional passphrase. The Teams service acts as an SRT listener, meaning the external encoder initiates the connection as an SRT caller, a standard pattern in broadcast deployments.
How It Compares with Teams Live Events and RTMP
Teams town halls, introduced in 2023 as the successor to Teams Live Events, have gradually absorbed or improved upon Live Events features. RTMP ingest was carried over to town halls early on, allowing basic encoder integration, but it never achieved the quality or reliability of SRT. RTMP is a TCP-based protocol with no native packet loss recovery; a single lost packet could cause a brief freeze or artefact, and latency often lingers around 3-10 seconds. SRT’s algorithmic packet retransmission and configurable buffer windows reduce that to under a second in optimal conditions.
For enterprise users who previously relied on third-party video platforms or dedicated hardware to get SRT into their streaming workflows, the direct integration into Teams eliminates complexity. A single encoder can now push an SRT stream directly to a Teams town hall, bypassing third-party cloud services or on-premises gateways. This reduces cost, lowers failure points, and keeps the video path entirely within Microsoft’s trusted boundaries.
Technical Deep-Dive: Setting Up SRT Ingest
The workflow is designed to be straightforward for anyone familiar with SRT. Within the Teams admin center or the town hall scheduling dialog, the organizer selects “SRT Ingest” as the input method. Teams then generates a unique SRT URL (srt://ingest.teams.microsoft.com:5000?streamid=...), along with an optional encryption passphrase. The external encoder is configured with this URL, the latency (default 120 ms), and the stream parameters.
Supported video codecs include H.264 (mandatory) and H.265/HEVC (limited availability in early rollout). Audio can be AAC or Opus, with a recommended bitrate of 2-6 Mbps for 1080p30. During the event, the stream appears as a main video feed that the producer can switch to alongside other presenters or screen shares. The SRT stream is also recorded and available for download after the event, just as any other town hall recording.
A notable architectural choice: Teams acts as the SRT listener, not a caller. This means the encoder initiates the connection, which is easier to configure through corporate firewalls because the outbound connection is less likely to be blocked. For IT departments, this simplifies firewall rules—only outbound UDP traffic to port 5000 (or a custom port range) needs to be permitted, with no need for port forwarding or DMZ placement of the encoder.
Community and Industry Reactions
Early feedback on the Microsoft Tech Community forums has been overwhelmingly positive. AV professionals who have tested the feature in the Targeted Release ring praise the reduced complexity and improved visual fidelity. One production lead at a Fortune 500 company noted that they could retire their dedicated RTMP-to-SRT bridge server, saving thousands in annual cloud costs. Another user highlighted how SRT’s content encryption aligns with their compliance requirements for board meeting streams.
Criticism has been minimal but centers on two areas: the initial omission of SRT output (sending the town hall stream out via SRT to an external platform or CDN) and the current lack of 4K SRT ingest on the web client. Microsoft has hinted via comments on the roadmap item that SRT output is under consideration for a future update, possibly by early 2027. For now, the feature is strictly ingest—bringing high-quality video into Teams, not sending it out.
Business Impact: Elevating Enterprise Streaming
The addition of SRT ingest to Teams town halls cannot be viewed in isolation. It is the latest in a series of streaming enhancements Microsoft has delivered over the past three years, including NDI output support, the live translation captions, and the integration of Viva Engage communities into town halls. The common thread is that Microsoft wants Teams to be the single pane of glass for all corporate communication, from casual chats to CEO broadcasts.
This consolidation has practical cost implications. Many large organizations operate hybrid event studios with Blackmagic, AJA, or Haivision encoders that support SRT natively. Previously, those signals had to be routed through an intermediary like Azure Media Services, a third-party CDN, or a hardware converter to reach Teams. Now, the direct path significantly reduces latency, points of failure, and operational overhead. For a quarterly earnings call streamed to 40,000 employees, that reliability translates directly into professional credibility.
Moreover, the move undercuts competitors like Zoom and Webex, both of which have offered SRT ingest for webinars or events for some time. Teams’ massive install base—over 300 million monthly active users—combined with native SRT support makes it a more attractive platform for high-end productions. Event agencies and in-house production teams can now standardize on Teams without maintaining parallel streaming infrastructure for different platforms.
Future Outlook and Upcoming Enhancements
The roadmap item (124848) also hints at additional capabilities in development. By late 2026, Microsoft may introduce failover SRT streams, allowing simultaneous dual-stream ingest for redundancy—a staple of live broadcast engineering. Another requested feature is dynamic bitrate adjustment based on network conditions, which the SRT protocol already supports but requires tighter integration on the client side.
On the horizon, the web client will gain SRT ingest, currently targeted for September 2026. This unlocks browser-based event management without the desktop app, critical for Mac users who prefer Safari or Chrome on managed devices. There’s also speculation, based on Microsoft’s hiring of broadcast engineers, that the company may eventually offer a first-party software encoder optimized for Teams SRT streams, though no official announcement has been made.
One thing is certain: SRT ingest is a signal that Microsoft takes the “premium” in “Teams Premium” seriously. With AI-powered features like intelligent recap and live translation already in place, high-fidelity video ingestion completes the package for executive communications. As more companies return to office but retain a distributed workforce, the demand for seamless, studio-quality streaming inside the tools workers already use will only grow.
How to Prepare for the Rollout
IT administrators don’t need to wait for the feature to hit their tenant to start planning. Microsoft recommends verifying that your network allows outbound UDP connections to the Teams SRT ingestion endpoints (the specific IP ranges will be published in the Office 365 URLs and IP address ranges list). If your organization uses a proxy or firewall that terminates UDP, you’ll need to bypass inspection for SRT traffic to avoid breaking the protocol’s timing-sensitive retransmission.
For event teams, now is the time to inventory your encoder hardware and ensure it supports SRT caller mode (most modern hardware from Haivision, Matrox, Telestream, and others already do). Conducting a trial run with a free, open-source SRT caller like OBS Studio can help build familiarity. The Teams Roadmap page includes a link to detailed documentation, which will go live concurrently with the rollout.
In conclusion, the June 30, 2026 roadmap update is more than a bullet point: it is a clear statement that Microsoft Teams is ready for prime time in the broadcast world. By embracing SRT, Microsoft eliminates one of the last remaining barriers for enterprises that want to consolidate their event production on Teams. For Windows users and IT pros managing hybrid infrastructures, the benefit is immediate—less complexity, better video, and a viewing experience that matches the polish of any high-budget production.