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 Admin → Apps → All Apps.
• 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 Admin → Apps → All Apps 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 → Organization → 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. To try the workflow without notifying anyone, load the sample streams from Settings. There is no test or rehearsal mode: Go live on a real stream starts it for real and notifies its audience — everyone, when no audience is set — at once. For a real rehearsal, schedule a stream whose audience is just the people taking part and set Who can watch to Only this stream’s audience. 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. Ending a stream is final — it can’t be restarted.

A stream is scheduled by choosing a title, an optional description, a scheduled start time, and whether to record. Anyone allowed by the Who can schedule and host streams setting can schedule one — by default admins, app admins and Livestreaming contributors. Whoever schedules a stream can name someone else as its host; after that, only they or an admin can change the host.

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 with OBS, vMix, or another RTMPS-capable encoder ready, and clicks Go live. That starts the stream and notifies its audience straight away; the console then shows the RTMPS server URL and stream key, which the host pastes into the encoder before starting it. 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

These levels of access govern who can do what:

• Viewer — any user the app is published to can watch, chat, ask questions, and vote in polls. A stream whose Who can watch is Only this stream’s audience is open only to its audience, its host, whoever scheduled it and admins.
• Scheduling — controlled by the Who can schedule and host streams setting. Business admins, Livestreaming app admins and Livestreaming contributors can always schedule, whatever the setting says.
• Running a stream — opening the host console (server URL and stream key), going live, ending, editing and canceling. Allowed for the stream’s host, whoever scheduled it, any business admin, and any Livestreaming app admin.
• Moderating — removing chat messages, marking questions answered or dismissed, launching and closing polls, and the AI features (cluster questions, generate recap). Allowed for everyone who can run the stream, plus every Livestreaming contributor.
• Livestreaming contributor — a role an admin grants per person under Admin → Apps → Livestreaming → Admins & Contributors, for a comms partner who works on streams without changing settings. A contributor schedules and runs their own streams and moderates every stream, but gets no host console, stream key, Go live or End stream on a stream they neither host nor scheduled.

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. It goes on the calendar of the stream’s audience, or of everyone when no audience is set.
• Broadcasts — a draft “We’re live” Broadcast is created when a stream goes live, when your company runs the Broadcast or Communications app. Nothing is sent until someone publishes it from Communications → Broadcasts: a business admin, a Communications or Broadcast app admin, anyone allowed to publish broadcasts or whose assigned audiences cover it, or the person who went live if they may create broadcasts. Admins, managers and anyone who manages or edits broadcasts see every draft there. While the stream is live, the stream page and host console link to the draft for the people who can open it, and a draft nobody sent is removed when the stream ends.
• Communications feed — a “Recording available” post is published to the Communications feed when the recording finishes (subject to the Communications contributor switch).

AI features

Three AI-powered features help hosts and viewers:

• Cluster questions (the Q&A on the watch page, for moderators) — 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. One summary is shared by everyone who asks; it is refreshed at most once a 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 Schedule stream. The stream appears in the Upcoming section of the dashboard and, if the Calendar integration is on, on the company Calendar.

Going live

There is no test or rehearsal mode. Go live is the real start: it notifies people at once, and the stream key only exists after you press it.

1. Open your encoder (OBS, vMix, or any RTMPS-capable software) so it is ready to paste into.
2. Open the stream and click Host console. Before you go live it shows who will be told and who can watch.
3. Click Go live. The status changes to Live straight away, everyone in the stream’s audience (or everyone, when no audience is set) gets a “Live now” notification with a link to the watch page, and the console shows the Server URL and Stream key.
4. Paste the Server URL and Stream key into your encoder and start it. Viewers can open the stream as soon as it is live, even before your encoder connects, so do this right away.
5. The console shows a real-time viewer count, a status badge, and the End stream button. Ending is final — a stream can’t be restarted.

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 Try going live again on the console (or Try again on the stream’s page). A failed stream is left off the Livestreaming home’s On air, Upcoming and Past lists and the home-page widget. It still appears in the Streams list, marked Failed, for everyone who can watch it, and its page tells them nothing was broadcast; only the people who can run the stream see the reason and the retry button.

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. For a stream with no audience set, everyone else gets it only when Remind everyone 15 minutes before a stream that has no audience set is on in Settings (off by default). People who registered for the stream under Calendar’s Events tab also get the calendar’s own reminder an hour before.

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. The console’s Open viewer page button takes the host there.
• Cluster questions, in the watch page’s Q&A, groups the questions 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 and can’t be restarted. 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. A moderator can use Generate recap to create a summary of the audience interaction.
4. To call off a stream that hasn’t aired, open it and choose Cancel stream from its ⋮ menu; for a stream that has ended, the same menu offers Delete. Either one also removes the mirrored Calendar event if one was created.

Analytics

Go to Apps → Livestreaming → Analytics (admin and app admin only). The page shows streams aired, broadcast minutes and recordings, all time; sample streams are left out. Broadcast minutes are what Livestreaming bills, in platform credits (20 credits per broadcast minute), and each stream’s minutes are rounded up individually. A recent-streams table lists individual events with their broadcast minutes, unique viewers 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, app admins and Livestreaming contributors can always schedule regardless. Switching back to admins only doesn’t take back streams already scheduled: their host and whoever scheduled them can still edit them and go live — cancel those from Streams if needed.
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. Switching it off removes upcoming streams from everyone’s calendar; switching it back on adds streams scheduled from then on, and ones already booked come back when they are edited.
Draft a ‘We’re live’ Broadcast when a stream goes live	On	Creates a draft Broadcast when the host goes live (when the Broadcast or Communications app is on). Nothing is sent until someone who may publish broadcasts publishes it from Communications → Broadcasts, and a draft nobody sent is removed when the stream ends.
Auto-post recordings to the Communications feed	Off	Posts a “Recording available” entry to the Communications feed when the recording finishes. Also requires the Communications app’s contributor switch for Livestreaming to be on.

Notifications

Setting	Default	What it changes
Remind everyone 15 minutes before a stream that has no audience set	Off	A stream with an audience always reminds that audience. On, every employee who can open the app also gets the 15-minute reminder for streams with no audience; off, they hear about those streams only when they go live.

6. More help

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