Microsoft Team Apps

Learn all about what Microsoft Teams has to offer and how you can leverage this platform in your organization.

Different Extensibility Options

Microsoft Teams gives you the freedom to build custom solutions to meet the unique needs of your users. With low code platforms, you can easily build applications and processes with little to no coding.

Microsoft Dataverse allows everyone to easily build and deploy apps with its built-in, low code data platform for Microsoft Teams. Microsoft Dataverse provides relational data storage, rich data types, enterprise-grade governance, and one-click solution deployment.

Find production-ready app templates for Microsoft Teams on GitHub. Each template contains detailed instructions to deploy and install that app for your organization so you can begin using it immediately.

Templates in Microsoft Teams allow administrators to quickly deploy Teams in their organization with ease. Users are given templates to choose from that best match the type of team they are looking to create.

Customize Teams to fit your needs by building new apps or integrating existing apps into your Teams. Use features such as tabs, messaging extensions, bots, webhooks, and Microsoft Graph to create simple or complex apps.

Microsoft Teams Apps (Simple) Functions

01
Collaborate on items in external systems
Bring information from other sources into Teams apps and collaborate on it with your team. For example, upload any Office 365 file into the corresponding channel for channel members to access and work on it as well. Enable your users to search for and retrieve it through the search engine.
02
Trigger workflows from conversations
Conversations often lead a flow of tasks that need to be completed next: set a reminder about that, submit a request, review a sales lead, etc. From within the Teams app, you can put access to the next workflow.
03
Notify your team of important events
Instead of sending email notifications, send notifications to Teams. Choose to send them to individual users, to a channel, or to the Activity Feed.
04
Embed functionality from other sites/services
Make your app easier to discover by embedding your existing single page app or build something from scratch for Teams.

Microsoft Teams (Complex) Functions:

Integrate the apps you’re using into Teams

Create a centralized workspace by bringing the apps and services you’re using into Teams. With over 500 compatible apps, eliminate the time wasted on switching between apps. Examples as shown below are SkillerBee, Kahoot!, and Workday.

Low code using Power Platform

Using the Microsoft Power Platform, build solutions with low-code tools. Create solutions to analyzing data, automating processes, and create virtual agents. The simplicity of Power Apps allows users of all experience levels to create developer-level solutions. Leverage the full potential of Microsoft Power Platform by connecting it across multiple platforms like Office 365, Dynamics 365, Azure, and hundreds of other apps.

Embed AI into business processes

AI Builder helps add AI to applications. Simple point-and-click guides in AI applications make it easy to use. It is comprised of Power BI, Power Apps, and Microsoft Flow. Additionally, it’s simplicity makes it suitable for all users – regardless of their technical experience. AI Builder can be extensible by using your  Microsoft Dataverse from the Power Platform and Dynamics 365.

Object Identification

AI Builder’s Object Detection feature identifies and tracks products automatically. The AI Builder can be trained to identify products more accurately by providing feedback on identification scenarios.

Prediction

Use business data to predict future outcomes. AI Builder has a guided experience that walks the user through the construction of a prediction model.

Text Classification

Analyze the meaning of text, like reviews and feedback. Text classification automatically reads texts and categorizes them into keywords.

Forms Processing

Automatically handle routine documents, like invoices or tax forms. AI Builder detects data, processes forms, and easily extracts the information.

 

Get straight to productivity with prebuilt AI scenarios including key phrase extraction, language detection, sentiment analysis, text recognition, business card reader, entity extraction, receipt processing, and category classification.

Power BI in Teams

Adding the Power BI in Microsoft Teams allows you to access all the basic Power BI service experience right within Teams. With the Power BI app  can:

1) create, view, and edit dashboards, reports and apps                 2) create and participate in workshops                                          3) share content through email or through Microsoft Teams

Integrate Power Apps into Microsoft Teams

Power apps can be used in four scenarios within Teams:

  1. Embed a canvas app as a tab app— The canvas app integrates business data from a variety of Microsoft and third-party sources.
  2. Embed a canvas app as a personal app
  3. Embed a model-driven app as a tab app
  4. Create apps in Teams using Microsoft Dataverse

Power Automate in Teams

With Power Automate in Teams, you can create flows from a custom template or from a blank template, just like you do from the Power Automate designer. The app also allows you to manage approvals right within Teams.

Power Virtual Agents Web App

Power Virtual Agents allows you to build powerful chatbots that can be created with a guided, no-code graphical interface. With Power Virtual Agents you can:

  • Empower your teams by allowing them to easily build bots without coding or AI expertise
  • Reduce costs by automating common inquiries
  • Improve customer satisfaction by resolving issues quickly 24/7 with personalized bot conversations

Create robust apps for the app store

Using the Developer toolkit, create robust apps for your organization. Share yours apps, games, and add-ins by submitting to Appsource for publication in Microsoft storefronts and monetize your work.

Teams App Templates

App templates are ready-made apps for Microsoft Teams that are available on GitHub. It allows you to deploy and install an app into your organization immediately. Listed are the key benefits of app templates.

Plug and Play Experience

All app templates include deployment scripts that will allow you to host all necessary services in Microsoft Azure. No coding is required to deploy the apps.

Production-Ready Code

App templates conform to recommended practices around security and infrastructure, and all community submitted changes to them are reviewed to ensure continued conformance.

Customizable and Extensible

Even though all app templates are ready to deploy as they are, the entire code base and deployment scripts are provided so that you can easily customize or extend them to fit your needs.

Detailed Documentation & Support

All app templates come with end-to-end documentation on solution architecture, deployment, and configuration steps. 

Templates for Teams

What is it?

Templates for teams is an easy way to to deploy customized teams in your organization. Users can select from a variety of templates that best suits their needs. These templates come with pre-defined channels, tabs, and pre-installed apps.

TEMPLATE OPTIONS AVAILABLE

Some of the template options available include: Adopt Office 365, Manage a Project Manage an Event, Onboard Employees, Organize Help Desk, Collaborate on Patient Care, Collaborate on Global Crisis, Collaborate within a Bank Branch, and many more.

Next Steps

To learn more about the features of each template, or to get a walk-through for the template creation process, visit the link below.

Microsoft Dataverse for Teams

Microsoft Dataverse for Teams delivers a built-in, low-code data platform for Teams. It provides relational data storage, rich data types, enterprise grade governance, and one-click solution deployment. It is built atop the Microsoft Dataverse (Common Data Service formally), which has over 1,000 features and supports Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Power Apps. With the addition of Microsoft Dataverse, Teams users now have key business data at their fingertips to build new apps that address business problems – all without ever leaving Teams.

Microsoft Teams x Microsoft Dataverse Team Functions

An integrated experience for your custom apps inside Teams

Creators can build, deploy, share, use, and administer Power Apps solutions from within Teams. Teams users, Microsoft partners, and IT departments can create and share custom templates across the organization.

Quickly build and deploy apps and bots inside Teams

Using both Power Apps App Studio and the Power Virtual Agents Portal that are implemented into Teams, users can easily and quickly build apps and bots. Users can create data tables using the built-in platform and it eliminates the need to connect to storage.

Easily share and administer custom solutions through Teams

Microsoft Dataverse for Teams enables a simplified sharing model for Team owners and members. Built-in security and governance that was proven through Microsoft Dataverse (formally Common Data) allows users to work confidently without worrying about the safety of their information. Microsoft Dataverse provides control to access and security roles automatically through Teams membership, but it is customizable by Teams owners.

Industry Example:

G&J Pepsi IT Team

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G&J Pepsi’s IT department consists of seven technology professionals. Among them, they have an impressive portfolio of skillsets that include databases, networking, leveraging applications, and more. But none of them consider themselves developers.

Using Power Apps, the team created Store Audit, an app used to conduct audits for retail spaces. Before creating the app, the team used robust methods of recording information. For example, many hours are spent on manually counting inventory. It was extremely time consuming, had little accountability, and was often subject to human error.

With the development of Store Audit and a merchandiser app, G&J Pepsi were able automate the same tasks with object detection. The cloud-services allowed everyone in the team to have access to the same information in real time. This way, time spent on waiting for approvals or emails sitting in mailboxes was eliminated. In the first year alone, they eliminated $500,000 of costs. The team was able to save significant costs on what they would have incurred if they outsourced an external team to develop the app.

Teams Extensibility for Developers

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Getting started with Microsoft Teams Development

Start building apps with the Microsoft Teams Toolkit and Visual Studio Code. The Microsoft Teams Toolkit guides you through the process of building, debugging and launching your Teams app all within the Visual Studio Code environment.

Bots- Conversation- Based Interactions

Conversation bots allow users to interact with your web service through text, interactive cards, and task modules.

Messaging Extensions- Task Oriented Interactions

Messaging extensions allow users to interact with your web service through buttons and forms in the Microsoft Teams client.

Task Modules and Cards- Rich Messaging and Notifications

Task modules allow you to create modal popup experiences in your Teams application. Inside the popup you can run your own custom HTML/JavaScript code, show an iframe based widget or display an adaptive card.

Webhooks and Connectors- Programmed Messaging and Notifications

Webhooks and connectors are a way to connect your web services to channels and teams inside Microsoft Teams.

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Microsoft Teams and Microsoft Graph API

Use Microsoft Graph to create a new virtual team, add the right people to the team, and configure the team with channels, tabs, and apps.

Tabs- Embedded Web Experiences

Tabs can be added as part of a channel inside a team, a group chat, or as a personal app for an individual user. You can include custom tabs with your app to embed you own web content in Teams.

Conclusion

Microsoft Teams Apps creates a more centralized workspace for users to collaborate. Avoid content switching by integrating the apps and services you already use. And for tasks that cannot be accomplished with existing apps, create your own app to get the jobs done that are personalized to your organization. The low-code models lets everyone in the organization participate in creating a more productive environment

Samples of Microsoft Teams Apps

Leave App

Allow your employees to request any type of leave including vacation, sick time, and much more with Leave. Adopt the Leave App in your organization for easy and simple management of leave requests on both the manager and employee end.

Support

Content Explorer

Content Explorer bridges the gap in document management between SharePoint and Teams. Adopt the Content Explorer app in your organization for easy access to files from SharePoint hubs, and sub-sites right within Microsoft Teams.

Support

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Microsoft Teams Apps