New Microsoft Graph APIs for automating team lifecycles

Nick Kramer (TEAMS)

Back in November, we announced the general availability of the Microsoft Graph APIs for Microsoft Teams, allowing our customers to better organize teams and channels, automate Teams lifecycles, and create pre-loaded, familiar experiences for your users. Since that announcement, we’ve been quietly adding additional features for automating team lifecycles. We wanted to recap some of the new features:

  • New types of teams (preview) – We’ve introduced seven new types of teams you can create through Microsoft Graph, including three types for education, two for retail, and two for healthcare.
  • Installing apps to teams using application permissions (preview) – We already support installing applications to teams with user delegated permissions; we’re happy to announce that installing apps using application permissions is now available in preview. Application permissions are a great way to install or upgrade an app across all teams in a tenant, and to create new teams from scratch that include apps.
  • New types of tabs – Microsoft Graph allows you to add tabs to channels. We’ve recently enabled configuring five new types of tabs – Word, Excel, PowerPoint, PDF, and document libraries.
  • New ways to send messages:
    • Replying to channel messages and sending channel messages with subjects and @mentions (preview) – We have a new and improved API for sending channel messages that adds new features like replies, subject lines, and @mentions. The new API is also aligned with the API to read channel messages.
    • Send them by email using the new Channel.email property (preview).
    • Use Microsoft Graph to install a bot that sends messages – Application permissions for installing apps to teams makes this more powerful than ever!
  • Deep links to channels (preview) – We’ve added the to complement webUrl, allowing you to create deep links to your channels and teams.
  • New superpowers for admins – Global admins and Microsoft Teams service admins can now access teams that they are not a member of, allowing them to create teams, change team settings, add and remove members, and create and delete channels and tabs.
  • Create teams with a single API call (preview) – You can now create a team with channels, apps, and tabs all in a single API call, making automated team lifecycles easier than ever.

What’s next?

Check out this tutorial to see how to take advantage of the Microsoft Graph APIs in your organization today.

  • Stay tuned for more announcements regarding Microsoft Graph APIs for messaging.
  • Sign up for the Teams Developer Preview Program to get the latest updates in your tenant.

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