Microsoft Primes Partners to Build Next Wave of Teams Collaborative Apps

MICROSOFT BUILD — Microsoft is adapting Teams to become the interface for collaborative apps, its new solutions category for hybrid work environments. Collaborative apps, revealed this week at the Microsoft Build developer conference, aims to bring more extensibility to Teams.

The shift to hybrid work environments has necessitated a major change in how people interact with applications. Consequently, Microsoft is enabling developers and its partner ecosystem to create new user experiences using Teams.

Microsoft’s Jeff Teper at Build 2021

“We need a new class of applications centered around collaboration versus individual productivity,” said Microsoft corporate VP Jeff Teper, who oversees the product groups focused on building new collaborative applications in Microsoft 365. Teper, joined by Microsoft Teams product managers, outlined collaborative apps in a Build session on Tuesday (available on demand).

In his opening remarks to the Build event, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella gave significant emphasis to collaborative apps.

“Just like Win32 defined a new era of apps, and web apps and mobile apps did the same, this new generation of cross-device collaborative applications will be a transformational, first-class platform opportunity,” Nadella said.

Enabling Collaboration

Teper said these apps will enable asynchronous and synchronous collaboration with meetings, ad-hoc messaging, creating content and business process automation.

“Microsoft Teams was built for this very purpose of enabling collaboration,” Teper said. “With over 145 million people using Teams every day, Teams has become the digital platform for work and learning. This creates a net-new creative and economic opportunity for developers to build the next generation of applications where collaboration is at the core, allowing people to work from anywhere at any time and in any way.”

#MicrosoftTeams now 145 million daily active users 🙏💜 – thank you to customers, partners, and team

— Jeff Teper (@jeffteper) April 27, 2021

The collaborative apps Microsoft is previewing aim to enable users to work more easily with others on projects, Teper said. Notably, collaborative apps will let them “stay in the flow of work without needing to context switch across multiple apps and data,” he added.

Developers can build collaborative apps using their preferred JavaScript environments and by plugging some APIs into Teams messages, channels and meetings. Teper said many of its ISV partners – including Adobe, SAP, ServiceNow and Workday – are already doing this.

“Teams serves as the interface where users can stay in the flow of their work with these new collaborative apps,” Teper added. “You can connect your existing services – whether it’s a packaged SaaS offering or your custom apps – into a growing number of integration points and teams to streamline work for everybody from the C-suite to frontline employees.”

Real-Time Collaboration Tools

Microsoft’s Archana Saseetharan at Build 2021

Microsoft is also adding the ability for apps to integrate onto a shared-meeting stage. This feature, now in preview, lets meeting participants use apps to collaborate in real time. Microsoft Teams platform group product manager Archana Saseetharan said this capability is the most requested feature by partners.

“Teams is all about collaborative teamwork and this feature just brings it home for applications to enable teamwork within meetings,” she said. “And you can integrate by adding the meeting stage context in your app manifest.”

Shared stage integration lets developers add …