The new Microsoft Teams Calls & Meetings API in Graph – What does it ACTUALLY mean?

[Tom Morgan]

Now that the dust has settled a bit on Ignite, it’s time to go back and look at the announcements made around the Calls & Meeting API. Hopefully, I can answer some common questions I’ve been asked over the past few days. If there’s a question that I haven’t answered though, let me know and I’ll update this post.

What just got announced?

A new API, for Teams. An API is an Application Programming Interface – it’s a way for developers to interact with a system using code. In this instance, it allows developers to control some aspects of Teams, specifically around calls and meetings. The API is in Public Preview right now – meaning you can use it but if it breaks, oh well.

What can it do?

APIs consist of a set of functionalities – things that can be done via the API. For this API, that set is split into 3 sections – Basic Calling, Meetings and IVR:

Basic Calling

• Receive a call – i.e. be told when someone is ringing your code
• Answer a call (the next step from receiving a call)
• Making a call
• Transferring a call
• Hanging up a call

Meetings

• Joining a meeting
• Viewing participants in a meeting
• Adding participants to a meeting
• Muting or Unmuting a participant
• Creating meetings

IVR

• Playing an audio file (for instance a welcome prompt)
• Recording audio (for instance someone saying ‘Sales’ or ‘Make a complaint’)
• Recognising DTMF tones
• Altering audio routes (within a meeting, adjust the standard audio routes to support things like Whisper)

post continues here: https://blog.thoughtstuff.co.uk/2018/10/calls-meetings-api-in-graph-what-does-it-actually-mean-and-s...

[#2]

Great stuff!! Thanks

[#3]

What about its roadmap? 

In an Ignite video, the presenter was asked about and said nothing. He said also that it is a developer preview. I'm ready to start testing and developing of Teams applications with the Calls API, 

but without a roadmap, my current experience says to wait till  summer 2019  for its release for production.

[#4]

I don't think there is any public GA date yet, but the idea of the Public Preview is to give you a chance to understand how it works, build some POCs, maybe even start building out your production code, so that as soon as it does go GA, you're 100% ready to go. So, I would say: start doing your development work today!

[#5]

Thanks for you answer.   The problem is that if the GA is in one quarter (or at least the missing features in preview), it sounds good to start today. If it is in 3 quarters, then we have problem to start.

Can you confirm please, my understanding below

1. the API  preview, right now,  works only for *incoming* calls from other *Teams* users ?

2. not PSTN incoming  and S4B users (online / on premises) -no roadmap yet ?

3. As for the development. The Bot is, essentially, a web service/asp .net app installed on every tenant?  

Is it possible the Bot to send  the event-messages in another Teams application or in an external desktop application?

Thanks!

[#6]

I am trying to run the samples but get some or the other issue in code with version of .NetFramework or Azure .. Is there a doc or steps listed somewhere so that i can follow the steps to run a Peer to Peer call or a Conference.

I am trying to automate some of the use cases :

1. Make a call from Virtual team to all the team members in the team .

2. Create a meeting and ask all others to join which will have virtual teams also physical devices.

3. Answer Call / join the meeting for both the above for virtual team  members using API.

to help faster testing of some devices on Teams. Any guidance would be very helpful.

Thanks.

[#7]

@Tom Morgan  Is there a way to get Status of the camera or that video is being used on a ongoing call?  Looking to build an IoT function based on the status of the camera on the device being used.   

[#8]

@Tom Morgan 

Hi,

I am looking for an API which help me to send a text message to Conference call instead of send message to any Teams Channel.

Is there any API released by Microsoft?

[#9]

@Tom Morgan  Can we write a program with Graph api like we did with UCMA for signing in to a Virtual client and dial , change presence and add many people to conference. 

Do we have some thing like we can create a Teams object and do all the functionality like actual teams client?

[#10]

@Tom Morgan Good Article!. 

I am trying to find out some API which intercept incoming call to notify OR log into my application in MS Team using APP/Bot. Is there any?

[#11]

@Tom MorganThe graph beta API references the ability to do things with Calls if you have a Call ID. But I don't see anywhere that I can obtain a call ID. For instance if I want to see a call in the past and find out the participants, how do I get a call ID?

Second question: Meetings have an object called meetingParticipantInfo, but there's nothing there that would indicate if that participant actually attended the meeting. Is there a way to get this information, and ideally, how long the participant attended.

[#12]

Hey Tom, appreciate this is 2 years old but hopefully someone knows this. 
I'm trying to get information from a teams video chat to do some analysis on speaker time; that is, who is the current active speaker, so I can understand which is active the most. 

The same with chat messages sent via meetings. Are these possible to retrieve via the Teams APIs?