Working together in real-time is about to get easier on Microsoft Teams
What you need to know
- Microsoft announced several new features for developers of Microsoft Teams apps and experiences.
- Many of the features focus on helping people work together in real-time.
- Microsoft also announced the ability to create custom scenes for Together mode in Teams.
Microsoft Build 2021 kicked off today, and Microsoft has plenty of announcements for developers. In addition to all of the new features and content for Windows developers, Microsoft announced several new features for Microsoft Teams. These new options allow developers to deliver a richer experience for the growing communication platform.
As expected from Build, these announcements are focused on developer options and capabilities, meaning they aren’t aimed at consumers. That being said, the new developer options will enable new experiences for end-users.
Making apps for Teams
Source: Daniel Rubino / Windows Central
Now, developers have new options for building these apps; shared staged integration, Together mode extensibility, and media APIs and resource-specific content.
Source: Microsoft
We already knew that the ability to create custom scenes for Together mode was on the way, but Microsoft officially announced it at Build.
Developers will also be able to utilize real-time access to audio and video streams for transcription, translation, and other information gathering.
Sharing content across Teams and Office
Source: Windows Central
Source: Microsoft
Today, Microsoft also launched Universal Actions for Adaptive Cards. These use the Azure Bot Framework and allow developers to make adaptive cards that work across Teams and the Outlook mobile and desktop clients. This reduces redundancy because developers can create a single experience that spans across the Microsoft 365 platform.
Easing development
Thanks to new features for the Microsoft Teams Toolkit for Visual Studio and Visual Studio Code, developers don’t have to use as much code to create experiences. There are out-of-the-box integrations with Microsoft Azure, Microsoft Graph, and more.
Microsoft also announced several improvements to the Developer portal for Microsoft Teams, including the ability to access it from any web browser and the ability to collaborate with peers by giving read/write access to other people.
Here are the new features highlighted by Microsoft:
- Access through any web browser and device for easy navigation
- Manage environment configurations, removing the need to manage multiple manifests in different
- environments
- Collaborate with peers by giving read/write access to apps to others to collaborate and update apps
- Ability for ISVs to link SaaS offers to their apps for new in-Teams purchase experience
- Gather helpful insights on usage of apps (preview)
Catch up on all the announcements from Build 2021
Microsoft announces Project Reunion 0.8 preview at Build 2021
Microsoft has today announced a new preview version of its new Project Reunion app framework, designed to unify the development platforms across Win32 and UWP apps. Microsoft launches Project Reunion 0.5 in March, and today is releasing version 0.8 which includes down-level support for Windows 10 version 1809 and up, .NET 5 support, as well as WinUI 3 and WebView2 support.
Microsoft Edge 91 ships with new Sleeping Tabs and Startup Boost features
At Build 2021, Microsoft has today announced that Edge 91 will ship with a couple of new features designed to make using Microsoft Edge more performant on low-end hardware. These new features include “Sleeping Tabs” and “Startup Boost,” designed to keep Edge running as smoothly as possible.
Linux GUI app support now shipping with the Windows Subsystem for Linux
At Build 2021, Microsoft has today announced the general availability of Linux GUI application support in the Windows Subsystem for Linux 2. The feature was announced and shipped in preview in the last handful of months, but the today it’s now generally available for all Windows Developers to download, install, and utilize.