If you’re one of Microsoft Teams’ 145 million daily active users, you’ve probably relied on the email client more than ever in the past year. As most of us have seen, replacing your physical desktop with a messaging app like Teams puts some limits on collaboration.

This is why Microsoft Announcement of collaborative applications for Teams at its Build Developer Conference earlier this year. These applications were intended to allow a more personalized, powerful and collaborative experience for teams.

At the Inspire 2021 Partner Conference, Microsoft announced a major update for these Teams collaborative apps, along with a new collection of collaborative app partners like SAP, C4C, Salesforce, ServiceNow, and Workday. I had the chance to sit down with Nicole Herskowitz, Managing Director of Microsoft Teams, and talk about how these new apps are transforming the Teams experience.

See the change

Microsoft

To start our conversation, Herskowitz explained how Microsoft sees the realities of remote working and how partners create and interact with applications. She tells me that while Teams is the platform for people to work, learn and collaborate, it is moving towards something more than that.

“Teams has really evolved into what we say, a digital workspace that truly brings business processes and applications together in one place. Teams have become an organizational layer because of the number of people using the product in their work, ”said Herskowitz.

Partners create all kinds of Teams apps that look and feel different. Since the start of 2020, the number of monthly active users of ISV and custom app-based solutions on Teams has increased nearly 10 times, per Microsoft.

Herskowitz says that in the past Microsoft focused on productivity apps, but now there’s a new class of apps where collaboration is at the heart of the experience. This is what Microsoft calls collaborative applications, where synchronous asynchronous collaboration comes into play. Basically, think of applications that pull and leverage real-time meetings, ad hoc messaging and business processes or even structured data on it. which organizations rely on.

Dive Deeper into Enhanced Teams Collaborative Apps

Service Now Collaboration app opens in Microsoft Teams as an app
Microsoft

Curious about what these enhanced collaborative Teams apps can do for businesses, I asked Herskowitz to dig a little deeper. She was using the new collaborative Service Now application in Teams for example.

In the past, Herskowitz says, you had to play down Teams when using something like Service Now. This would then remove you from your workflow and interrupt your process. Now, with the collaborative Service Now Teams application formed in partnership with Microsoft, organizations can rethink their incident response management process. Everything can now be done in Teams without switching apps, for example in the event that a company employee finds that a PC is not functioning properly, or even by automating resetting passwords.

With the integration with the Service Now virtual agent, that employee can have conversations and open a support ticket in a Teams channel or chat, with the information captured in Teams but stored in Service Now. The virtual agent in Teams can even hand things over to a Live Agent, who will tap into Teams and Microsoft Graph to answer questions and find the solution.

“The teams are where I spend my day. Now I can troubleshoot an end user issues right within Teams, the way the company wants to organize it. Whether it’s live virtual agents, that whole workflow can be streamlined there, ”Herskowitz said.

And these collaborative applications also work. Clients like Levi Strauss have been able to form quick lines of communication between agents and employees. The cases of deviation rates are above 50% and the internal customer service rate (CSAT) for their employees has jumped to 100%, I was told.

The monday.com app opens as a collaboration app in Teams.
Microsoft

But this is just an application. Herskowitz mentioned other great examples from Microsoft partners. SalesForce is another. It will allow access to customer files as part of a chat or channel. Then there’s also Atlassian’s Confluence Cloud, which will allow you next month to take notes in the side panel of a meeting window, act on items, and make decisions with snippets, mentions and tables.

Other examples cover Working day in teams, which will release an update next month to add a new Teams tab experience to help users complete workflows and tasks through a clickable user interface. same Monday.com is coming to Teams. It will integrate project building blocks like tables, views, charts, and automations into the daily workflow in the Teams channel, chat, and individual context.

“It’s these acts of collaboration that really bring together the best of what, you know, teams and the Microsoft cloud have to offer with these other apps that have, you know, key scenarios or workloads that they take on. in charge, ”Herskowitz said.

Why are partners building these apps and what are the benefits?

The Salesforce Contract collaboration app opens in Teams.
Microsoft

I also wanted to know why Microsoft is opening Teams to developers and partners to build more collaborative apps. Why are they seeing so much success in convincing developers to get down to business? Herskowitz says it’s a couple of different things.

The first is that Teams has a big reach with 145 million daily active users. The second is that Microsoft is making it easier for developers. Microsoft allows developers to leverage existing skills so they can integrate existing apps with JavaScript web technologies and the Teams SDK, with a Teams app running on all devices where Teams is available.

This is why Microsoft is allowing partners this summer to sell their applications within teams via AppSource or the Teams admin center. This allows businesses to monetize their offerings. It also means that someone like you or me can purchase an app subscription through Teams and charge the company for it – or use a credit card.

Microsoft is even reducing Marketplace Fees, from 20% to just 3%, so ISVs can make more money. It’s a change that’s happening across Microsoft, across the company’s other app stores on Windows and Xbox.

Herskowitz mentioned that this is just the beginning. Obviously these collaborative apps are aimed at corporate users right now, but Teams is still an evolving platform for Microsoft, so don’t count on anything else new just yet.

“It’s about how to make my business run better by integrating these mission-critical applications with these Teams experiences. That’s really the goal right now, but we’ll continue to, you know, evolve teams as a platform to support all types of scenarios beyond just the commercial or business type and you’ll find apps the same way you normally would through the Teams app store.

Updates from other teams

Microsoft Dynamics opens in Teams in Microsoft 365.
Microsoft

My conversation with Herskowitz ended with a quick chat about some of the other new features coming to Teams. These primarily involve Dynamics 365. In a big step, Microsoft is integrating Dynamics 365 with Teams, making Dynamics 365 one of Microsoft’s flagship collaborative apps – available at no additional cost to any Teams user.

This should allow organizations to take advantage of several different features. You’ll be able to invite anyone to view and collaborate on customer records right in the flow of a Teams chat or channel at no additional cost. Dynamics 365 users can also add a Teams meeting when creating an appointment, which provides access to key customer information during a Teams call. And finally, Dynamics 365 and Teams users can now stay up to date on records with automated notifications and connected workflows.

“Now anyone with a Teams license can access Dynamics data in the Teams experience. It’s about making it more ubiquitous so that the information critical to decision making and customer support is there, ”said Herskowitz.

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