Microsoft is making a bigger push to make Teams a platform for collaborative apps.
After launching apps for Team Meetings last Fall, Microsoft is now giving developers more flexibility. For one, their apps will no longer have to be confined into sidebars, as Teams is now testing testing main stage collaboration. That could, for example, allow for whiteboard apps to take over the main window in Teams so you can scribble ideas down together with colleagues. Developers can also craft custom scenes for Meetings specific to their companies, as well as tap into APIs that can automate certain meeting events around the start and end time of a session.
This summer, Teams developers will also be able to tap into the media streams during Meetings for things like real-time transcription, translation and note taking. That also gives IT admins more control about how apps use those resources you wouldn’t want to give a transcription app the ability to jot down every single meeting, after all.
Additionally, Microsoft is now previewing Fluid Framework components in Teams Chats. That lets you work on things like a table, list or text field that can be copied into other Teams conversations or Office 365 apps, while also being editable in real-time by colleagues. Fluid Framework is a lot to wrap your head around, but you can think of it like a complete deconstruction of traditional Office documents. Instead, it’s more focused on small bits of collaborative resources that can be shared anywhere.
Microsoft will also allow developers to sell their own subscriptions within their Teams apps. This opens up the Teams Store to in-app purchases. Microsoft hasn’t gone into detail on whether it takes a cut on sales here, but Teper is keen to point out Microsoft’s main focus is building an ecosystem of apps. “We may make some money in the marketplace, but our primary business model will be the Microsoft 365 licenses and the Azure and Power platform licenses that developers consume,” says Teper.
With 145 million daily active users of Microsoft Teams, there certainly could be an appetite for more apps that plug into and appear inside of Teams meetings. Microsoft has always positioned Teams as a hub for productivity, and these latest announcements are clearly designed to make Teams a little more developer-friendly.
