MS Teams Tabs – Building custom apps in MS Teams

MS Teams is one of the most extensively used applications by corporate employees across different organizations. Apart from the rich set of built-in features and apps, custom apps can be built and published to MS Teams app store.

MS Teams Tabs (custom apps) could be a personal tab, group chat channel, chatbot, etc.

Problem statements:

Use Case 1:

To build an employee utility app accessible inside MS Teams for ease of use and better employee experience.

Solution:

Web apps can be developed as independent mobile responsive applications and could be embedded as personal tabs inside MS Teams. The MS Teams developer portal helps to build a custom app by linking an existing web app. The Teams Tab app behaves like the native app inside MS Teams and can be used across different devices like mobiles, tablets, and desktops.

Use Case 2:

Enable SSO login for the app so the integrated APIs could validate the user.

Solution:

TeamsJS SDK can be packaged along with a web app that helps to detect the browser or MS Teams platform and to interact with MS teams in getting the access token of the logged-in user. The app should be registered in Azure App registration in the first place to enable SSO.

Use Case 3:

Capability to attach images using the camera.

Solution:

Camera read permissions can be enabled in the application manifest either manually or through the MS Teams developer portal, so the app could access the camera and attach images.

Use Case 4:

Receive notifications for the app directly in the MS Teams activity feed.

Solution:

  • To receive notifications for the app, notification permissions should be enabled in the app manifest.
  • MS graph provides an API to push notifications to the Teams activity feed by configuring the MS Teams App ID and the ID registered in Azure App Registration.

Author Details

Sam Sunder Singh Joshua Peter Nallathambi

Sam is a Technology Lead with Infosys. He helps in digital transformation for various enterprises across the globe with his expertise in web technologies via Live Enterprise Interactions Suite and Digital Marketplace Platforms.

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