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Microsoft Teams Blog

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Coordinate crisis communications using Microsoft Teams + Power Platform

Microsoft

Mar 09, 2020

Whenever crises arise, questions inevitably come up about how to most effectively address them. Regardless of geography or industry, a common challenge all organizations face when responding to crises, is determining how best to share real-time information and provide a platform for employees to connect.

Microsoft Teams can help maintain connectivity to aid in that information sharing, even while working remotely. As we recently shared, there are lots of ways to get Teams for free – even if you work for a business that isn’t currently licensed for Teams.

Additionally to augment Teams' capabilities, we have released a free “Crisis Communication” app built with Microsoft Power Apps for any customer to download, customize, and deploy to their organization. The app can provide users with a single portal to help ensure they are equipped with recommendations from global health authorities, topical world news, the latest information from government officials and experts, and company-specific content including relevant contacts, company news, and links to support channels. Additionally, users can easily share their individual work status (such as working from home or out of the office) with their teams, and even automatically send help requests to a dedicated channel in Teams.

The first step in this process is to follow the complete instructions for downloading the Power Apps app, which can be found here. Video instructions for downloading this app can be found here. In addition to existing customers, this app is available to users on the new Office 365 E1 trial.

Deploying this Crisis Communications app to Teams is a quick and easy way gain broad adoption, centralize discussions, and amplify information across the organization. Teams Admins, as well as end-users, can add this app to Teams, albeit with slightly different steps. Once you have downloaded the app following the written or video instructions linked above, the steps below walk through the process to deploy it to Teams.

1. Download the app from the Power Apps portal

On the Power Apps home screen, the Crisis Communication app will appear under “Your apps”
Click the “…” to the right of the app name, then select the “Add to Teams” option
This will download a zip file which can be uploaded to Teams in the next step, so save the file to a location you can remember and easily access

2. Add the app to your Teams app store

Once the app has been downloaded from your Power Apps portal as a zip file, open Teams and navigate to the app store.
Use the “Upload a custom app” function at the bottom-left to upload the zip file you downloaded from Power Apps in the prior step.

Teams Admins will be able to upload this for their entire tenant, whereas non-Admin users will be able to upload this file for themselves and their teams.

3a. Pin the app to your organization’s Teams app bar (Teams Admins)

Teams Admins have a great opportunity to drive awareness and highlight the apps that their organization should be using. As with any app, Teams Admins can use the Teams Admin Center to pin this app to the Teams App bar for their entire tenant.

Under “Teams apps”, select “Setup policies”, and choose which policy to update (the “Global” policy, for example).
Now select “Add apps” under the “Pinned apps” section, and select the app to pin (based on the name you gave the app in Power Apps).
Shortly, all users in this policy will see this app appear on their Teams app bar.

3b. Pin the app to your personal Teams app bar (any Teams user)
Even if your Teams Admin has not taken steps to add this app to the Teams app bar for your tenant, any user can add this app their personal app bar.

Simply open the app and once the app icon appears on your app bar, right click the icon and select “pin”. The app icon will remain on your app bar to provide you easy access, even after you navigate away from the app.

Moving forward
The release of this app is the first step in this journey, and we will continue to add more capabilities over the coming days. Please share app feedback and suggestions with the Power Apps Community.

UPDATE (March 19th): The Crisis Communications app has received several updates to address user feedback, and now includes a version that is GCC (US Government Cloud) compatible in Power Apps.

For more guidance about deploying and using this or other apps that you have built as part of your crisis response, please see the Microsoft Teams and Power Apps whitepaper. To learn more about how Teams can help you work remotely, without feeling remote, please visit the Microsoft Teams webpage.

This app is a sample and may be used with Microsoft Power Apps and Teams for dissemination of reference information only. This app is not intended or made available for use as a medical device, clinical support, diagnostic tool, or other technology intended to be used in the diagnosis, cure, mitigation, treatment, or prevention of disease or other conditions, and no license or right is granted by Microsoft to use this app for such purposes. This app is not designed or intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, treatment, or judgement and should not be used as such. Customer bears the sole risk and responsibility for any use of this app. Microsoft does not warrant that the app or any materials provided in connection therewith will be sufficient for any medical purposes or meet the health or medical requirements of any person.

As part of the status transfer, the person's location data is transferred to a customer's SharePoint in order to determine the respective crisis team measures for individuals. However, this can be adjusted by customizing the Power Apps template independently if required by the customer.

Updated Jan 26, 2021

Version 10.0

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38 Comments

JamesMWood
Copper Contributor
Oct 19, 2020
I had the same issue as Fernando, a ton of bugs on install, missing icons, links going to the wrong place. So posted some questions on how to get an installer that works and got nothing back so wrote it off as a bad investment of my time
Fernando Nogueira Ornellas
Copper Contributor
Sep 24, 2020
This app have one thousand bugs, after months was overlooked by develop team. I posted some troubles in PowerApps forum without a answer
Shradds
Copper Contributor
Jul 03, 2020
Hi,

Thank you for this useful blog. had a query, how do we deleted any news article or tips that we've created on the crisis communication admin app, i do not see a scroll or delete option.

Regards,
Shraddha
rmartinez5683
Copper Contributor
May 12, 2020
I have successfully set this up and have been working on testing within my department but we have seen a version that includes the ability to edit your work status, has that function been removed or is there a way to enable it? I am also interested in adding additional statuses like "At The Office" but can not figure out how to do this either can you point me in the right direction. Thanks
mohamed farook
Copper Contributor
May 06, 2020
It was really nice tool. Currently it was tagged to single group.

Is it possible to build multiple group within the same app.
Benette Bezuidenhout
Copper Contributor
Apr 21, 2020
pchims

Awesomeness! Thank you

I tried that now and success!!
pchims
Copper Contributor
Apr 20, 2020
Benette Bezuidenhout
i was getting the same error too. But i tried via the crisis communication sharepoint site.

site contents----->CI Usefulinks----->create new
Benette Bezuidenhout
Copper Contributor
Apr 09, 2020
Hi Guys,

First of all - amazing app and the tutorial is nicely done.

My question/problem:

How do I add links to the links tab?

When I go to create links and want to click save I receive the following error.

"No data source provided"
Thank You
agilancolbert
Copper Contributor
Apr 07, 2020
Hi Pete_Daderko ,

During the configuration of Crisis Communication Admin's app settings, there is no choice for the notification method. Is there any additional steps / something to change on my part?

Thanks in advance 🙂
LisaJo48
Iron Contributor
Apr 06, 2020
Pete_Daderko
E1 and E3 both work.

I had the "Power Apps Plan 2 (Qualified Offer) license added to the user and that corrected it.

Or, if you're using the new licensing options, I think the equivalent one is named Power Apps per User. You may also need to use the new 'sister' license for Power Automate called Power Automate per User along with it.

I am able to see what licenses a user account has via the Admin Portal->Users->Active and searching for the user name, then clicking on Licenses and Apps.