Microsoft Teams opens its doors to third-party applications during meetings

Microsoft enables third-party application developers to integrate into the Microsoft Teams meeting experience for the first time. New developer-centric features will allow applications to be integrated into Teams meetings during video calls, and even before and after meetings. Third-party apps will be able to display content during Microsoft Teams calls and even display notifications during calls. It’s a huge expansion of what third-party apps can do in Microsoft Teams right now.

“Applications can be extended through chat and collaboration and easily have a workflow that expands into meetings now,” says Michal Lesiczka, group product manager for Microsoft Teams, in an interview with The edge.

Applications will be able to add a tab to meeting invitations where Teams users can interact with the application before a meeting starts. Once a meeting begins, team participants will be able to add applications to the live call. This could include bots that trigger live notifications about events while a team meeting is taking place or an app that displays information to participants in the sidebar. The integration also includes the ability for applications to appear as a button in the meeting’s control bar.

Image: Microsoft

Previously, if you wanted to share an app or more than a webcam in Microsoft Teams, the only option available was screen sharing, which isn’t always ideal if you just want to demonstrate an app or avoid privacy notifications or headaches. These new features will allow developers to extend the meeting experience beyond the basics.

Developers have wanted this type of team integration for a long time. “One of the key pieces of feedback is: ‘Okay, we can integrate and enable scenarios in these other areas, but in meetings, we also want to play there,'” explains Archana Saseetharan, group product manager for Microsoft Teams. , in an interview with The edge. “We are enabling new APIs and SDK capabilities for developers to integrate and target these new areas. It is the same development process, the same publication process, the same validation process. Everything is the same, but you have these three new capabilities to go to the goal. “

Microsoft Teams meetings also offer chat history, files, meeting notes, a whiteboard, and the ability to record and transcribe meetings. The addition of third-party applications means that they will also be permanently linked to individual team meetings.

“We have really seen a lot of excitement about this,” says Lesiczka. “The partners have been asking us about connecting to the meetings, so there is a lot of excitement about it.” Developers will be able to start testing these new application integrations later this month, and Microsoft is already seeing interest from Polly, Open Agora, iCIMS, Miro and HireVue for the applications that will be integrated into the meetings.

Image: Microsoft

Like the host of other Microsoft Teams features that have been announced in the past few weeks, third-party app integration has also been fueled by the ongoing pandemic. “The whole focus on remote work has accelerated our delivery on this,” admits Saseetharan. Microsoft is also rolling out a new “Together Mode” that tries to turn coworkers into virtual avatars to improve meetings.

This Together mode combined with third-party applications in meetings could create an interesting future for Microsoft teams in the era of remote work. “Every feature you see us announcing is amplifying meetings … we’re thinking about the extensibility of all of them,” explains Saseetharan. “Everything Teams is doing has an extensibility role and how we amplify the possibilities for developers to connect more and more deeply into the product.”

If developers connect with Microsoft Teams more deeply, we could see some innovative new ways to collaborate in future meetings. Microsoft is not alone in experiencing how remote work and meetings will work in post-pandemic scenarios. Facebook also recently mocked its own vision of remote work using augmented and virtual reality, and Google is rapidly integrating its disparate Chat, Rooms and Meet communications platforms into Gmail in an effort to compete with Microsoft Teams and Slack. Even Slack is trying to reinvent the future of business communications with Slack Connect, a more powerful way for companies to communicate and collaborate with each other.

GIF: Microsoft

Microsoft is moving incredibly fast to keep up with the competition, and in many areas, it combines many different functions in one application (or “hub” as Microsoft likes to call it). Saseetharan even hints that Microsoft is watching developers’ interest in connecting to the background effects and filters for Teams video calls.

The pandemic has been the driving force behind Microsoft Teams features in recent months, pushing the service up to 75 million daily active users. Microsoft’s top Teams video call competitor Zoom has also seen tremendous growth, but has had to spend the past few months rectifying controversial privacy and security issues rather than implementing new features.

It is clear that Microsoft has taken the opportunity to push aggressively with Teams, and there will surely be many more Teams features before the end of 2020.