M365 Community Conference: Building Collaborative Apps in Teams to bring People together

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Session: Building Collaborative Apps in Teams to bring People together
Speakers: Loki Meyburg

Collaboration and productivity are essential for any organization, especially in the hybrid work environment. Microsoft Teams is the ultimate platform for collaboration, allowing you to work together with apps in chats, channels, and meetings. Loki Meyburg explained in his session how to build collaborative apps in Teams and enhance your work experience.

Collaboration vs. Productivity

First, let’s understand the difference between collaboration and productivity, and how Teams can support both aspects of work. Collaboration is the act of working together with multiple people to achieve a common goal, while productivity is the efficiency and effectiveness of individual or collective work efforts. Microsoft Teams enables you to collaborate around apps by sharing, discovering, notifying, and collaborating on app content in various contexts.

Sharing is the first step of collaboration

One of the key features of Teams is the ability to collaborate around shared links. When you share a link to an app content in a chat or channel, Teams can automatically unfurl the link and attach a rich interactive preview card, using adaptive cards and bots. The preview card can show relevant information and actions related to the app content, such as a product launch diagram, a survey, or a report. You can also open the app content in a popout window with chat on the side or share it to a meeting and use it together in real-time.

To build these experiences, you can use message extensions, link unfurling, app content stages, and Live Share. Message extensions allow you to register your domain and turn links into adaptive cards. Link unfurling enables bots to unfurl the links and attach the adaptive cards to the messages. App content stages are special views that present the web app in a popout window or a meeting stage. Live Share is a service that allows you to easily enable multiplayer experiences in meetings, with features such as inking, cursors, video, and audio synchronization.

How to build these experiences

Bots are the foundation on which we will build these experiences. They enable everything else. You can use message extensions and link unfurling to attach rich interactive adaptive card previews when your URLs get shared in chats or channels. These previews can show relevant information and actions related to your app content, such as a product launch diagram, a survey, or a report. You can also customize the look and feel of the adaptive cards using templates and styles.

There are two app content stages, collab stage and meeting stage, to present your web app in Teams. The collab stage is a popout window that opens when you click on the app icon in the chat header or the preview card. It allows you to view and interact with the app content along with the chat on the side. The meeting stage is a full-screen view that opens when you share the app content to a meeting. It allows you to collaborate on the app content in real-time with other meeting participants. You can use Live Share to easily enable multiplayer experiences in meetings, with features such as inking, cursors, video, and audio synchronization.

Going from productivity to collaboration

Another important aspect of building collaborative apps in Teams is taking collaboration to the next level. You can enhance the collaboration experience by proactively notifying users and creating focused conversations, leveraging app skills and natural language processing, and using Teams SSO to authenticate users. You can also use some tools and resources for developers, such as Figma UI Kit, Teams Toolkit for Visual Studio Code, and Developer Portal. You should also be aware of some upcoming improvements, such as app rating and review, adaptive card styling, permissions and consent, and instant app tabs.

In conclusion, Teams can help you collaborate around apps in various scenarios and contexts, and you can build these experiences using the Teams platform.