What’s new in the Microsoft Teams Platform | Microsoft Build 2020

Office Add-ins team

Today at Build, we’re excited to show you all the new features and capabilities that’ll enhance and streamline the end-to-end app development experience for developers and provide an engaging experience with end users.

Streamlining app development

Having the right set of tools and workflows available for building apps is important to our developers. We’re excited to announce some new tools, updates and capabilities to streamline app development.

Visual Studio and Visual Studio Code extension (preview)

With the new Visual Studio and Visual Studio Code extensions, you can use the power of these tools to build your Teams app quickly, with a simple interface that enables you to:

  • Build project scaffolding
  • Configure features
  • Create app package manifest and setup hosting
  • Validate app package
  • Start app publishing process (for yourself, to your organization’s catalog, or to the Teams app store)

Visual Studio Code extension is now available in public preview. Visual Studio extension coming soon!

Image of Visual Studio Code screen with ‘Overview’, ‘Project Setup’, ‘Configuration’, and ‘Validation’ panes displayed

New Power Platform + Teams enhancements

We’re excited to introduce several new features enhancing the Power Platform + Teams integrations that are either available or coming soon.  These features enable you to build low-code/no-code experiences with custom apps, workflows, bots, and dashboards for your team and customers.

Image of Power Platform features coming available on Teams

  • Simplified Power Apps and Power Virtual Agents Add to Teams button, streamlining the addition of custom solutions to the Teams app store.
  • Enhanced workflow automation with Power Automate + Teams with new triggers and actions built specifically for Teams to unlock custom message extensions, allow for automated @mentioning, and provide a customized bot experience. New business process scenario templates will also be rolled out to jump start automation development.
  • Improved Power BI sharing to Teams with a new Share to Teams button in Power BI to easily share Power BI reports. You’ll also be able to copy individual charts in a Power BI report to a Teams conversation and have the chat include a rich thumbnail preview of the chart, as well as an adaptive card allowing users to take actions on that chart.
  • Low-code bots brought to Teams, with Power Virtual Agents, making it easier to create and manage low-code chatbots for Teams, to provide a streamlined experience for end users.

App Studio Update (v1.4.0)

App Studio for Microsoft Teams makes it easy to start creating or integrating your own Teams apps by streamlining the creation of the manifest and package for your app. With the latest update (v1.4.0), we’ve built some enhancements, including:

  • Support for app manifest schema 1.6.
  • An Advanced section in app details to easily support advanced features.
  • An app package validation tool to run tests that extend outside the basic schema validation. This is great for those looking to publish to Partner Center for pre-validation or having issues sideloading their app.
  • Better error handling via a bot framework connection with user guidance on how to perform the same actions in the bot framework web portal.

Image of App Studio from the Teams Desktop Client

24 new granular permissions for the Teams Microsoft Graph APIs

These new APIs are available on the Microsoft Graph v1.0 endpoint and will give you more flexibility and granularity for app data access authorization. With granular permissions, developers and admins can now narrow the app’s access and scope to a specific team’s set of data, as opposed to all team data.

Mobile device capability for apps

Coming soon this year, you’ll be able to extend your app’s capabilities by connecting to native mobile device features, such as camera, location, and microphone. Seamlessly enable scenarios, such as having your bot support and manage expense reporting utilizing the mobile device’s camera.

Image of Teams app on mobile using camera functionality

New Microsoft Graph APIs in beta for subscribing to notifications for new app messages – in beta

Using the Microsoft Graph API, we’ve provided you some new APIs in beta that will provide you the ability to create subscriptions for different event types, such as new/edited/deleted messages, replies, reactions, as well as to all or specific channels and chat threads – allowing your apps to refresh when new content is available. These are great for development of data loss prevention (DLP) and safety apps. For more information about these subscription APIs that are in beta, see Create subscription (beta).

 Activity feed notifications for apps – coming soon to beta

The new activity feed notifications via the Microsoft Graph API gives you a new and simpler way to send app notifications to users across devices. You’ll enjoy the ability to customize and control the notification experience – everything from the notification structure, to what is surfaced to the user after they click the notification.

Image of Activity Notification for apps

New Microsoft Graph APIs in v1.0 – coming soon

We have some new Microsoft Graph APIs for Teams coming to the v1.0 endpoint that you’ll be able to explore soon.

  • Send channel messages API allows you to send channel messages and replies as well as include attachments.
  • primaryChannel API allows you to access to data without making assumptions about naming.
  • filesFolder API allows you to find the SharePoint folder for a channel without assuming the folder has the same name as the channel.
  • Shifts API enables a scheduling module in Teams to enable you to integrate existing or custom workforce management systems for scenarios such as auto-approvals for shift requests.

Seamless end-to-end app lifecycle experience

Building an app is just the beginning of the journey for app developers. A smooth process with business decision makers and IT admins is an essential part of that journey. We’re excited to announce that, coming soon, developers and admins will enjoy a streamlined custom app submission process and enhanced app management capabilities within the Teams Admin Center – providing a connected experience through the development, publishing and end user discovery process.

Streamlined app submission workflows

You will soon be able to submit Teams apps through any of these clients and trusted sources (App Studio, Visual Studio, Visual Studio Code, Power Apps, SharePoint Framework) via our App Submission Microsoft Graph API – streamlining the process of submitting apps directly to the Teams Admin Center for IT admins to review and approve.

Clip of admin quickly receiving submission of app and publishing

 

New app management capabilities within the Teams Admin Center

Microsoft Teams provides a robust set of controls to help administrators confidently enable and manage apps in their Teams environment. We’re excited to announce several new capabilities that will soon be added to our existing controls to manage Teams apps.

  • The new Manage Apps view in the Microsoft Teams Admin Center will show all apps in your tenants – including app certification, approval status, and licensing status.

Image of the ‘Manage Apps view’ within the Microsoft Teams Admin Center

  • A new third party subscription purchase experience will enable IT admins to view and purchase subscriptions associated with the 3rd party Teams apps. Admins can purchase licenses and later pin the app to targeted employees right from within the Teams Admin Center.

Image of Teams Admin Center view with catalog of apps and purchase subscription status

Image of App purchase view within Teams Admin Center

  • IT admins can improve app discoverability and adoption by creating custom templates for users to choose from when creating a team. Templates can include pre-defined channels, tabs, and apps so users can hit the ground running in Teams. By packaging relevant apps inside templates, IT admins can effectively surface them to the right members of the organization. Templates in Teams will be available in the next few months.

gif showing usage of custom templates

 

  • Admins will be able to grant consent to Microsoft Graph API permissions on behalf of the entire tenant for the permissions an app is requesting, such as reading information stored in a team or sending an email on behalf of users. They will also be able to see granular permissions and provide resource-specific consent with the ability to install an app to a specific team.

Image of Graph Permissions screen in the Teams Admin Center

Drive a deeper user engagement

Take advantage of Azure Active Directory Single Sign-On (SSO) to eliminate need for re-signing into Teams apps

End users will soon be able to enjoy the benefits of Azure Active Directory Single Sign-On (SSO) for supported Teams apps on both desktop and mobile. After they’re signed into Teams, users won’t have to sign in again on apps that integrate with single sign-on for both desktop and mobile. Developers will also enjoy a simplified authentication process through a single API call. We’ll roll out with tabs in general availability soon, followed by bots later this year.

Image of Teams icon and Azure Active Directory Single Sign-On (SSO) icon

Azure Active Directory Conditional Access – coming soon

This capability will enable end users to run apps and tabs even if their IT admin has set up conditional access policies requiring the use of a trusted device. Website tabs on Windows that use Azure AD will automatically sign you in and support device-specific conditional access policies.

Window displaying access error message without conditional access adjacent to window with conditional access

Resource-Specific Consent (RSC) – coming soon to preview

This capability will empower Team owners to install an app for their specific team and restrict the app’s scope and access to data to only that one team. This allows team owners to make decisions versus needing the global IT admin to provision access.

Experience attempting to access an app without RSC to having RSC enabled                                                                            

Image displaying experience attempting to access an app without RSC to having RSC enabled

Pop-out apps, channel tabs, and chat tabs – coming later this year

Coming soon this year, end users will be able to ‘pop-out’ personal apps and tabs* (channels and chats). Users will be able to open separate windows for their apps so they can work while easily accessing their team chats to continue to collaborate. Simply right-click on an app to see the option to pop out or visit a tab and find the pop-out icon in the top right.

*Not all tabs supported at time of launch

Image of apps popped out from Teams client

 

More powerful cards inside bots and connectors in Teams

Develop a richer and more customizable experience using Adaptive Cards 1.2 in Teams on desktop and mobile. Highly requested features such as @mentions support within cards, allow the ability to direct a user’s attention to cards that are relevant to them – providing you an enhanced notification and engagement capability for your app. RichText Blocks allow you greater flexibility in designing the look and feel of the cards. These are available in general availability and ready for you to explore today.

@mentions in cards image for desktop and mobile

 

Rich Text Blocks

 

Messaging actions for mobile – coming soon

We are excited to announce that message action support for mobile will be coming soon to preview. Message actions can be triggered directly from a message and can be used to enable scenarios such as creating tasks or work items following a discussion within a chat or channel.

Image of message actions being triggered from a group chat

Personal apps available on mobile – coming soon for preview

Personal apps are Teams applications focusing on interactions with a single user, such as 1:1 Conversational bots or personal tabs. These types of apps are already available for desktop and web and will be available for mobile – coming soon for preview.

Showing Teams Platform Resource Library on a phone

Thank you

We hope you that you’ve enjoyed learning about all of the new features and capabilities from the Microsoft Teams platform. Please enjoy your time at Build and come join us at our many online sessions to learn more about what’s new in the Teams Platform.

Happy coding!

Microsoft Teams team

 

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