Microsoft Teams empowers people and organisations to stay productive in remote work environments and the Power Platform provides low code custom development tools to those within your organisation that need them. When integrated Teams + Power Platform allow anyone to design and build the tools they need to get their work done efficiently.
In this article we will explore new ways that you can use the integration to build, deploy and manage these custom solutions to improve productivity.
Easily automate work for users and teams
The new Power Automate app specifically for Teams makes it easier than ever to build automated workflows. The new app includes easy to edit templates for some of the most common automation scenarios in Microsoft Teams. Its intuitive building experience allows users to create flows with drop-down menus and pre-populated dynamic text. Your users are also able to start building flows from scratch, or duplicate and edit flows they’ve already built to save even more time.
Manage custom approvals in Teams
There isn’t an industry or department that doesn’t need to manage approvals in some form or another from annual leave requests, payment requests, overtime requests, and so on. Now Microsoft Teams users will soon be able to manage, share and act on approvals directly within Teams. Users can start an approval from a Teams channel conversation, from a chat, or from the Approval app in Teams. These approvals are powered by Power Automate and are now generally available.
Build and deploy custom apps and chatbots in Teams
Teams users can now build custom apps and AI-powered chatbots inside Teams, then easily deploy them to their colleagues utilising the new Power Virtual Agents app within Teams. Bots are built simply by adding questions to ask visitors and messages to send back to the user.
Whilst these bots may be simple to build they are still exceptionally valuable. New features include the ability for bots to recognise the user they are chatting with and create a more personal experience. For example, if a colleague queries a bot regarding HR policies, they could be provided with the specific policies to that region.
Engage with data in the new Power BI app
The recently announced Power Bi app for Teams will make it easier to gain insight and create visualisations from Excel datasets. The app provides users with quick access to their frequently used reports, example reports from the Power BI community and commonly used datasets. Users can also send a report that they are viewing to a chat quickly, whilst maintaining the filtering and slicing of the data making it easier to start a conversation with those insights. These can also be searched directly from the search bar in Teams.
These new features bring the full benefit of Power BI into a centralised location, from here users can collaborate more effectively and make decisions based on real-time insights.
Ready to get started?
These innovative tools can empower anyone with a problem, to build the solution they need. If you are looking to implement either Microsoft Teams or the Power Platform get in touch with us today. We would be happy to discuss either solution or how you could harness the power of this new integration.