This month’s call featured the Microsoft Teams Toolkit for Visual Studio Code, where our duo of experts Karthig Balendran, Teams Product Manager, and Allen Snow, Teams Sr. Software Engineer, walked us through a live demo showcasing the capabilities and benefits of the toolkit. Then Emily Chen, Teams Product Manager, and Michael Aldridge, Sr Content Program Manager shared an ask for feedback from the community to enhance the Microsoft Teams developer experience for the Microsoft 365 Developer Program.
Microsoft Teams Toolkit for Visual Studio Code and Visual Studio
The Microsoft Teams Toolkit is an extension we made for Visual Studio and Visual Studio Code that streamlines the Teams app development process – whether you’re making a tab, bot, or messaging extension. Our demo showcased the Teams Toolkit for Visual Studio Code, but for our developers who use Visual Studio, worry not, as our Teams Toolkit for Visual Studio is GA and ready for install! You can find links to both toolkits in the links below and please do provide feedback in the Q&A sections, as your feedback is important and will help us improve the toolkit capabilities and experience.
Before you get started
Prior to building your Teams app, it’s important to understand the different extensibility points available to you across the Teams UI that you can extend (tab, bots, messaging extensions). Take time to think through the specific use case and/or problem you’re trying resolve and the different ways users would interact with your app in the Teams client.
You’ll also need a developer/test environment, so if you are not already enrolled, we encourage you to sign up for our Microsoft 365 Developer Program, which provides you a free Microsoft 365 sandbox subscription that you can use to test the Teams apps that you build.
Microsoft Teams Toolkit for Visual Studio Code
When you start a project in the Teams Toolkit, you’ll have everything you need in one place including pre-requisites, access to documentation and a simple view across the Teams app lifecycle. You’ll have the option to select whether you’re creating a tab, bot, or messaging extension.
Karthig provided a live demo showcasing the steps to building a Teams tab app and provided a real-time snapshot into the process. The toolkit makes it easy by providing the scaffolding and components available right within the left pane in Visual Studio Code – streamlining the experience for developers. It also provides a series of validation checks so you can quickly look at your manifest file to see if there would be anything that would impact publishing.
Microsoft Teams Features in the Microsoft 365 Developer Program
We concluded our call with a segment from Emily and Michael, who are working together to enhance the Microsoft Teams developer experience in the Microsoft 365 Developer Program. They’re seeking feedback to help guide decisions on what to include in content packs and other areas that would make the app development process more streamlined.
For those interested in providing feedback to help us enhance the Microsoft 365 Developer Program for Teams development, please fill out the attached form here at: https://aka.ms/TeamsFocusGroup and we will follow up with you.
Watch the call here
Feedback
We are continually looking for ways to enhance our calls and gather feedback. Please take a couple minutes to fill out this form to tell us how the call went, what we can do to be better, and what future topics you’d like addressed.
Thanks!
Resources
Microsoft Teams Resources
- Microsoft Teams Learn Modules
- Yeoman generator to build Teams apps
- Microsoft Teams developer documentation
- Microsoft Teams issues and technical questions – StackOverflow
- Microsoft Teams Platform feature recommendations and suggestions – Microsoft Teams User Voice
- Ask the Experts – Discussion and Blogs – Microsoft Tech Community
- Microsoft Teams Feedback
Additional resources
The next call in this series will be on Tuesday, August 18, 2020 at 8:00AM PST. Download the calendar invite at https://aka.ms/microsoftteamscommunitycall
