Microsoft Teams is a rich collaboration platform used by millions of people every day. By building custom apps for Teams you can help them work more effectively and connect them with even more knowledge and insights. Here are some resources to help you get started.
What kind of apps can you build on Teams
The Microsoft Teams platform offers you several extensibility points for building apps. On Teams you can build:
- tabs that allow you to expose your whole web app inside Teams to let users conveniently access it without leaving Teams
- bots that help people complete tasks through conversations. Bots are a great way to expose relevant features of your app and guide users through the scenario like a personal assistant
- messaging extensions to help people complete tasks in a visually-compelling way. Messaging extensions are similar to bots but are more visually oriented and ideal for showing rich data
- webhooks to bring notifications from external systems into conversations
If you have an existing web or mobile app, you can also bring information from Teams into your app.
Resources for getting started with building apps for Teams
Sounds interesting? Here are some resources to help you get started building apps for Teams.
Develop apps for Microsoft Teams (learning path)
If you learn in a structured way and like to understand the concepts before getting to code, this is the best place to start. This learning path will teach you the most important pieces of building apps for Teams. You will learn what types of apps you can build for Teams and how to use the available tools. This learning path is a part of preparation for a Microsoft 365 developer certification.
Microsoft Teams developer documentation
Another great place to start is the developer documentation. It's a complete reference of the different development capabilities on the Teams platform. You will find in there everything from a high-level overview of what you can build on Teams to the detailed specification of the different features. What's cool about learning from the docs is that you can choose your own path and which topics you want to learn first.
View Microsoft Teams developer documentation
Teams app templates
One way to learn is to see what's possible and what others build. If you want to get inspired, see what's possible or look at how you could implement a specific scenario, you should check out the Teams app templates. There are over 40 sample ready-to-use apps including their source code for you to explore!
More app templates are being added regularly so it's a page you should definitely bookmark and check out once in a while.
Tutorials for the Microsoft Teams developer platform
A part of the docs are tutorials for the Teams developer platform. If you want to get hands-on, this is a great place to start. You can find tutorials showing apps built using different technologies like Node.js or C#. And don't forget to check out code samples too!
View tutorials for the Teams developer platform
Microsoft 365 PnP Community
Microsoft 365 has a vibrant community that supports each other in building apps on Microsoft 365. We share our experiences through regular community calls, offer guidance, record videos, share sample apps, and build tools to speed up development. You can find everything we have to offer at aka.ms/m365pnp.
Start building apps for Teams today
Over 250 million users work with Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Teams plays a key role in people's workdays. By integrating your app with Teams you bring it to where people already are and make it a part of their daily routine.
Give Teams a try and I'm curious to hear what you've built. And if you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask them on our community forums at aka.ms/m365pnp-community.