Building an employee recognition program that actually lives in Teams?

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.