Build 2022: Microsoft Teams Gets Live Share Feature and New Collaborative Apps

Microsoft Teams

At its Build 2022 developer conference today, Microsoft announced new tools for developers to create collaboration solutions for Teams and Microsoft 365. The Redmond giant has also unveiled a new Live Share feature for Microsoft Teams apps. 

Based on Fluid Framework, the new Live Share experience enables meeting attendees to create, edit, annotate, interact, zoom in and out, and collaborate on shared content with colleagues. This feature is designed to support a variety of collaboration scenarios such as engineering reviews, video workflow reviews, and game-based programming lessons. 

Microsoft has released Teams SDK extensions in preview to help developers and independent software vendors (ISVs) add the new Live Share capabilities to their apps. 

Microsoft Teams Gets Live Share Feature and New Collaborative Apps

New Approvals APIs

In addition to the new Live Share feature, Microsoft has announced the general availability of Teams JavaScript SDK 2.0 and App manifest version 1.13. It should help developers to extend their Teams app’s personal tabs and search-based message extensions to other Microsoft 365 apps such as Outlook and Office.com. 

There are also new Create, Read, Update, Delete (CRUD) Approvals APIs that will be available in preview this summer. The new APIs will enable developers to integrate the Approvals functionality into their applications. 

Microsoft Power Apps add collaboration controls 

Next up, Microsoft plans to add support for collaboration controls to its Power apps this summer. This means that developers will now be able to integrate Teams meetings, chat, files, tasks, as well as Approvals directly into their Power Apps. 

Microsoft Teams Gets Live Share Feature and New Collaborative Apps

The firm is also introducing several new Microsoft Graph APIs for Teams in public preview. The new APIs add support for several new capabilities such as federated chats, read receipts, and chats & membership changes subscriptions. 

Microsoft Teams Toolkit for Visual Studio Code 

Microsoft has announced that the Teams Toolkit for Visual Studio Code and Visual Studio is hitting general availability this month. It allows developers to quickly create and deploy Teams apps on the web and mobile. The Teams Toolkit provides various features for building and publishing commands, notifications, and responses for business actions. 

Teams App Store updates

Microsoft Teams App Store is getting some enhancements aimed at helping developers monetize their apps and boost engagement. These include new AI-powered recommendations & app flyouts, and license management capabilities. There is also a new in-app purchasing for Teams apps, and you can check out this support document for more details.

Microsoft Teams announces Live Share Feature and Teams App Store updates

Microsoft Loop improvements 

Microsoft has announced that developers will be able to create Loop components starting next month. However, it will be up to the developers to decide if they want to convert existing Adaptive Cards or create new Adaptive Card-based Loop components. Additionally, it will be possible to copy and paste these Loop components in Outlook emails and Teams chats, though there is no ETA.

App Compliance Automation Tool for Microsoft 365

Last but not least, Microsoft has launched a new App Compliance Automation Tool for Microsoft 365 apps in public preview. The new tool should enable independent software vendors (ISVs) to ensure their apps meet the security and compliance requirements. 

Microsoft Teams is also getting a bunch of new collaborative apps from ISV partners. The list includes Bosch Cognitive Service Maintenance, Figma, Observable, MURAL, ServiceDesk Plus Cloud, and SAP S/4HANA operational purchaser chatbot.