Teams app that fits

Microsoft Teams offers a collection of apps provided by Microsoft or external services. Teams apps include tabs, bots, message extensions, or any combination of these capabilities. You can extend Teams apps to work on Outlook and Microsoft 365 App, too. These apps expand the value of the Teams collaborative experience for users.

Apps present themselves as personal or shared. A personal app enables one-on-one communication, while a shared app lets multiple users collaborate in a common space.

Driving organizational goals

Collaboration and communication serve as key pillars for any organization. Concise communication, integration with necessary services, and on-the-go accessibility demonstrate why organizations choose to rely on apps.

Organizations connect with customers, provide services, and share information with apps. Apps become the meeting place for people to work together. A well-placed app builds a cohesive environment for external and internal business needs.

Consider example areas where an app meets a business requirement:

You can build apps with the Teams platform by extending app capabilities to fit specific needs. You can create something brand new for Teams or integrate an existing app.

Take a look at these example developer personas and app scenarios:

You can meet all scenarios using Teams apps, thereby enhancing collaboration across Microsoft 365.

Build apps with Microsoft Teams platform

Teams apps empower collaborative workspaces to increase productivity by bringing key information, common tools, and trusted processes directly to users. You can extend the capabilities of the Teams platform to fulfill specific requirements by creating a brand new app or integrating an existing app. This process meets both organizational goals and productivity needs.

The benefits of building apps span from meeting organizational goals to increasing internal productivity.

Here's why Teams is best suited for your app needs:

1. Communication and collaboration

   You can build Teams apps that pull information from external systems, facilitate conversations, and enable users to take action. Teams integrates these features within the client, and you can push information to a targeted audience when an event or action occurs in an external system.

2. Social interactions

   Teams serves as a social platform. Custom social-focused apps encourage teams to extend company culture into the collaboration space. You can use apps for sending polls, enabling users to share feedback, and promoting connection and communication.

   

3. Common business processes

   You can create Teams apps to handle repetitive tasks such as creating and sharing sales call reports, tracking project timelines, reserving common resources, submitting help desk requests, and managing expense reports. Such tasks often benefit from automation and streamlined workflows when integrated into Teams apps.

   

4. Personal apps with tabs and bots

   Personal apps incorporate one-to-one conversational bots that open dialogue between the bot and a user. You can include dialogs (referred to as task modules in TeamsJS v1.x) that simplify complex data sets. For instance, a design tool app with multiple collaborators integrates a shared bot that notifies users, driving engagement. Additionally, a chat bot replaces emails or phone calls for IT or HR departments effectively.

5. Surface existing app

   You can integrate existing web apps, SharePoint sites (or SPFx extensions), PowerApps, or other web-based applications into Teams. Extending existing apps and porting interactive features to Teams expands the user base and increases engagement.

   

6. Teams Store advantage

   You can push apps to Teams Store to improve availability and create marketing opportunities. For startups and established organizations, the Teams Store marketplace increases product awareness and reaches large audiences.

7. Build once, run everywhere

   Extend Teams apps across Microsoft 365, which streamlines delivering cross-platform apps to a wider audience. A single codebase supports tailored app experiences for Teams, Outlook, and Microsoft 365 app environments. End users access apps without leaving their work context, while administrators manage and deploy workflows efficiently.

   Use the latest app manifest and Teams JavaScript client library versions to enable personal tabs and message extension apps to run in other Microsoft 365 experiences in addition to Teams. You can reach users on platforms such as Outlook and Microsoft 365 app with the same codebase, broadening app reach and streamlining development and distribution processes.

Next step