Creating custom meetings experiences in Microsoft Teams with Apps

 

As organizations embrace a hybrid work environment they are increasingly looking for a custom, rich meetings experience. Microsoft Teams brings together a unified meetings, chat, calling, and collaboration platform and now provides developers with an extensible canvas that now extends to include new meeting extensibilities allowing them to reimagine how their apps are able to transform the meeting experience.

 

App integration and interactivity across the entire meeting lifecycle

Meetings are not static experiences; there are several user interactions and activities leading up to, during, and following the meeting. With  meetings extensibility customers can now leverage apps throughout the entire meetings lifecycle – empowering users to be more collaborative and productive.

 

From exposing apps during pre-meeting planning, to leveraging the new content surfaces for richer experiences during the meeting and building post-meeting scenarios customers are able to reimagine their Teams meetings experience.

 

Extensible content surfaces and meeting APIs for richer meeting experiences

Three new extensible content surfaces are available for meetings. These new surfaces include:

 

• Pre and Post meeting tab
• In-meeting side panel
• In-meeting content notification

 

Pre and post-meeting tab 

 

The pre-meeting experience helps users discover meeting apps and prepare for their meetings in advance like drafting a poll for use later during the meeting. Meetings  apps are aware of the meeting context like who are the participants and what are  their role in the meeting creating a custom in app experience for organizers and attendees. For post-meeting experience these tabs can be used to capture meeting notes, visualizations, and outcomes for organizers and attendees to action on.

 

 

In-meeting content side panel

 

The new in meeting 320px canvas allows meeting participants to meet around content and their line of business applications.

 

 

In-meeting content notifications

 

And in-meeting content notifications enable even deeper integration via the in-meeting notification surface to engage participants during the meeting and share  actionable information.

 

 

Underneath all these new surfaces are meeting APIs that power these experiences. From fetching participant information to surface roster/roles for contextualized experiences to notification APIs that signal based on end-user action to show-case an in-meeting notification bubble.

 

Unveiling the power of meetings extensibility through our rich ecosystem of partners

We’ve made great strides over the past few months, and a large part of the success and progress made was from the feedback and partnership from an innovative group of launch partners. Our partners are reimagining the meeting experience and transforming their respective industries and functional areas.

 

Project Management

 

Project management is an essential process that all organizations need to keep their business operating smoothly, and meetings are where the bulk of the management occurs. With meetings extensibility, developers can integrate their apps directly into the meeting surface – allowing users to bring their project management apps to organize tasks, facilitate project planning, and much more. Partners including Range, Asana, Monday.com, Smartsheet, Soapbox, PriorityMatrix,  Decisions, Lucid Agreements and Wrike have built powerful integrations directly into the meeting experience.

 

Talent Management

 

Talent management apps are empowering organizations to bring their human resource processes into a single hub for collaboration. With meetings extensibility, developers can integrate their apps into the full meeting lifecycle to power scenarios such as in-meeting candidate analysis, interview question reminder notifications, and much more. Users can bring talent management processes directly into the Teams meeting lifecycle. Partners including HireVue and Talview are leading the way and have built powerful integrations directly into the meeting experience.

 

Incident & Resolution Management  

 

Incident & resolution management is a key component of a solid DevOps practice. Today, users leverage incident & resolution management apps in Teams to stay on top of incidents through channel or bot notifications, and quickly coalesce as a team to resolve. With meetings extensibility, developers can integrate these apps directly within the meetings lifecycle – empowering DevOps teams to bring incidents directly into meetings where they can collaborate and resolve issues in real-time, directly within the app in the meeting itself. xMatters utilizes meetings extensibility to power these scenarios.

 

Polling

 

Polling during meetings is an efficient and effective way to quickly ask a question and gather feedback from a group of individuals. While polling apps have long been integrated in our Teams experience through bots and channel/group conversations, we are excited to see these apps integrated directly in meetings – where users will be able to conduct real-time polls with their meeting participants. Partners including Polly, Slido, Vivox and Pigeonhole are utilizing meetings extensibility to bring this experience to bear!

 

Business Intelligence

 

Business Intelligence (BI) & analytics are critical for all organizations and the need to have real-time data and insights available for teams to review and discuss is essential. With meetings extensibility, developers can integrate their BI & analytics apps into the meeting experience – empowering users to power scenarios such as the ability to attach analyses prior to a meeting, collaborate real-time on insights during the meeting, and capture notes after the meeting, and more.

 

Sales and CRM 

 

Sales and CRM apps provide sales teams the tools to let them focus on the sale rather than the minutia. With meetings extensibility, developers can integrate sales apps directly into the meeting lifecycle and enable the sales team to bring the power of their apps to let them focus on finding the leads and making the sale with their customers. Bigtincan brings the powerful capabilities of their app into the meeting itself to help sales teams throughout the sales process.

 

Other meetings apps available in GCC

 

HR meetings apps

 

• Teamflect

 

Analytics meetings apps

 

• Qbo

 

EDU meetings apps in GCC

 

• Buncee
• Wakelet
• Vevox

 

Lastly, we are integrating some of our own Microsoft apps to enrich the meeting experience. Users will be able to utilize some of popular apps such as Power Apps – bringing those capabilities directly into the meeting experience! These include :

 

• Excel
• OneNote
• PowerBi
• Word
• Stream
• PowerPoint
• Visio
• Website

 

We are thrilled with all the innovative meeting scenarios that our partners have enabled in their apps using our meetings extensibility, and so we invite you to check out these apps when they become available!

 

Leveraging your first meetings app in Teams

 

You are planning your next meeting in Microsoft Teams and need a means to ask a set of questions to gather feedback from a group of individuals in a meeting.

 

Step 1

 

Schedule your meeting in Microsoft Teams.

 

 

Step 2

 

Add Polly to your previously scheduled meeting by selecting the “+” sign alongside meeting notes and search for Polly.

 

 

 

Step 3

 

Go ahead and create your first meeting poll in Polly.

 

 

Step 4

 

Join your meeting and share your poll into the meeting.

 

 

Step 5

 

Review the results of your poll in the post meeting dialogue.

 

Known limitations 

• In meetings apps are not available in channel meetings.
• In meetings apps are not available to external, anonymous users.
• In meetings apps cannot yet be added to a meeting in progress.