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Teams provides a rich and integrated environment to build modern applications. By leveraging Teams as a platform, you can enhance your desktop and mobile solutions with powerful capabilities. Choose the right features to best suit your app’s requirements.
Teams app features
Important
Microsoft 365 Connectors (previously called Office 365 Connectors) are nearing deprecation, and the creation of new Microsoft 365 Connectors will soon be blocked. For more information on the schedule and how the Workflows app provides a more flexible and secure experience, see retirement of Microsoft 365 connectors within Microsoft Teams.
How can you create a webhook in Teams?
To automatically post to a chat or channel when a webhook request is received, use the predefined workflow templates or create a workflow from scratch using the When a Teams webhook request is received trigger. For more information, see post a workflow when a webhook request is received in Microsoft Teams.
For more information about the When a Teams webhook request is received trigger, see Microsoft Teams - Webhook.
If you've already built Office 365 Connectors:
Create a Power Automate connector: Power Automate enhances the widely used Workflows apps in Teams. It's the scalable and secure approach to transmit data programmatically into and out of Teams. If you adopt this method, you can create workflow templates for posting alerts from your product to Teams channels. This approach simplifies user adoption of the new method. For more information, see Power Automate for enterprise developers, ISVs, and partners.
Update your Teams app: You can enhance your current Teams app. For example, you can enable users to set up proactive messages based on trigger events within your system. For more information, see how bots can post to channels through proactive messages.
Known issues
- Workflows app can't post in private channels as a flow bot. However, it can post on behalf of a user.
- Workflows support Adaptive Cards only. It doesn't support the older message card format that Office 365 Connectors use. Workflows don't support using the message card format. For more information, see how to convert connector message card format to Adaptive Card.
- Workflows don't offer third-party connectors such as DataDog and Jenkins.
- Workflows can only be created in your default environment.
Limitations
Workflows are linked only to specific users (referred to as owners of the workflow) and not to a Teams team or channel. Workflows can become orphan flows in the absence of an owner if no co-owners assigned. To maintain continuity in the business process automated by the flow, admins can add one or more co-owners and grant them full control over the workflow. They can also add authentication for connections, if any, and enable the flow if it has been disabled. For more information, see manage orphan flows.
Following is a detailed table describing each feature available on Teams, its purpose, and common use cases:
| Feature | Description | Useful for |
|---|---|---|
| Tabs | Tabs are Teams-aware webpages embedded directly within Microsoft Teams. They can be integrated as part of a channel inside a team, in group chats, or as personal apps designed for individual users. | Personal tabs, channel or group tabs, Stage View enhancements, and link unfurling to provide in-context information. |
| Bots | Bots, also known as chatbots or conversational agents, have evolved with artificial intelligence to understand and respond to user input in natural language. They can handle simple Q&A interactions or engage in complex conversations that interface with back-end services. | Providing customer support, generating content such as sales presentations or code, offering personalized guidance within your app, conducting complex financial analyses, and automating various tasks. |
| Message extension | Message extensions allow users to interact with your web service directly from the Teams client. They support searching for information or triggering actions in external systems. The outcome can be delivered as a richly formatted card within the conversation. | Reserving resources by showing available time slots, searching for work items and sharing them as Adaptive Cards, creating bugs in tracking systems, assigning them, and then updating the conversation thread with detailed information. |
| Meeting extensions | With meeting extensions, you can build applications that enhance the productivity of Teams meetings. | Conducting on-the-fly surveys during a meeting or sending non-disruptive reminders to ensure meeting efficiency. |
| Personal app | A personal app offers a dedicated workspace—a tab or bot—to help users concentrate on their individual tasks or view personalized activities. | Providing a private workspace like OneNote within Teams or offering an overview of tasks via Planner across various boards that have been added as channel tabs. |
| Webhooks and connectors | These allow your app to interact and communicate with external systems by sending or receiving notifications and messages. | Subscribing to notifications from external web services and integrating external messages into your Teams environment. |
| Microsoft Graph | Microsoft Graph APIs empower your Teams app with collaborative features, offering access to Microsoft 365 data and driving engagement through activity feed notifications. | Sending activity feed notifications, importing/exporting messages, retrieving meeting transcripts or recordings, employing resource-specific consent (RSC) permissions, and executing CRUD operations on users, chats, channels, or apps. |
| Adaptive Cards | Adaptive Cards enable you to organize information into structured groups while allowing user interactions with specific data segments. | Sharing details using a combination of text and images, or gathering user input via forms. |
| Dialogs (referred as task modules in TeamsJS v1.x) | Dialogs allow you to present modal pop-up experiences within your Teams application. They enable you to run custom HTML or JavaScript code and embed iframe-based content such as YouTube or Microsoft Stream videos. | Building interactive, modal interfaces that can run custom scripts or embed multimedia content to enhance user engagement. |
| Copilot extensibility | Copilot extensibility offers the ability to customize Microsoft 365 Copilot by integrating additional knowledge bases and skills. Agents can seamlessly incorporate your organization’s expertise, processes, and automation capabilities into the Copilot experience. | Generating unique insights, automating customer support, aiding in content creation, and performing data analysis by leveraging organizational data and processes. |
For additional details on extending Microsoft 365 Copilot, see Microsoft 365 Copilot extensibility.
Extend your Teams app across Microsoft 365
If you've already built some Teams apps, you can enhance them further by extending across Microsoft 365. This expansion enables your apps to be accessible not only within Teams but also through other Microsoft 365 platforms such as Outlook.
Next step
You've now explored a variety of Teams platform features. With this knowledge, you are better equipped to build and expand your app.
Let's move forward and review the solution for the user story.
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The source for this content can be found on GitHub, where you can also create and review issues and pull requests. For more information, see our contributor guide.
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