Forum Discussion
Building an employee recognition program that actually lives in Teams?
HR asked me to set up some kind of peer recognition system where people can give kudos to each other. They want it inside Teams because thats where everyone already is. I spent a few hours looking at options, Power Automate flows with adaptive cards, custom bots, etc. but nothing feels clean or sustainable. Has anyone set up a recognition/kudos system thats actually integrated into Teams and not just a bot that posts to a channel?
3 Replies
Hey Jordan,
I really appreciate your HR team for pushing you all to implement a recognition system. You definitely dont need to set anything up with power automate. First off, definitely have a dedicated “Recognition“ channel. and make it a thread so it is all interactive. You might need something a bit more sophisticated if you want to set up automations. There are some pretty interesting employee engagement software out there today. We currently use Teamflect for all the engagement side of our business which includes surveys, feedback, recognition and rewards. It has pretty seamless integration with Teams and feels quite like a natural part of it. Kudos is also a good option. I also know that 15five has a recognition-specific integration for Teams.
Hope this helps!
Hey Jordan,
We have an Announcements Channel at the company then decided to also create a "Shout Outsđź’Ą" Channel that everyone in the company can post to. Don't forget to make it a Thread so people can comment to specific Shout Outs. Team uses a lot of GIFs and it's pretty engaging for the team.
Hello Jordan,
Before building anything custom, there are two native options worth checking first.
The Praise app (built into Teams): it's already there, enabled by default. Open a chat, select Actions and apps (+) in the compose box, then Praise. The main limitation: it's conversational (tied to a specific chat or channel), there's no aggregated recognition wall or history dashboard out of the box.
Praise in Viva Engage: it supports Praise posts in communities, which can be surfaced inside a Teams channel via the Viva Engage app. More visible, more social, but requires Viva Engage to be active in your tenant.
If you need more (history, points, rewards catalog), several certified Teams Store apps fill that gap natively: Kudos or EngageWith. These are proper Teams tab/app integrations, not bots posting to channels.
Start with the Praise app, validate adoption with HR, then layer on a third-party app if you need history or rewards. Building custom with Power Automate + adaptive cards is maintenance overhead you don't need when native options already exist.
Hope this helps and covers what you were looking for.
