Enhance Microsoft Teams with App Templates

As one of the most widely used apps in Office 365, Microsoft Teams is an amazing tool for business. It boosts team communication with chats and meetings and can dramatically improve workflow with file-sharing and collaborative editing, and it’s only getting better. 

In a previous article we discuss the enhanced integration between the Power Platform and Microsoft Teams but a new way of taking your Microsoft Teams to the next level is via App Templates. You’ll no longer have to waste time switching between apps. With these app templates you’ll save time, improve processes and get more done. 

In this article we explain more about App Templates for Microsoft Teams, their key benefits and provide some examples to help you get started. 

What are App Templates? 

App templates are ready made applications that you can easily add to Microsoft Teams. They are ready to use applications that adhere to security and infrastructure best practices. The apps come ready to deploy, each comes with clear instructions on how to deploy the application in Azure and make it available to your users within Teams. The source code is also published, meaning the templates can be customised and extended to meet specific customer requirements. 

The benefits of App Templates 

• Rich capability: The full range of app templates are available to you for free and provide a wide range of features for your employees. 
• Plug and play: All app templates for Microsoft Teams are ready to deploy with no coding  required to deploy the apps. 
• Production-ready code: The app templates follow recommended best practices around security and infrastructure, and all community submitted changes are reviewed to ensure continued conformance. 
• Customisable and extensible: While all app templates are ready to deploy, Microsoft provide the ability to easily customise or extend them to fit your unique needs. 
• Detailed documentation & support: All app templates are accompanied by end-to-end documentation on solution architecture, deployment, and configuration steps. The repositories are monitored as well.

3 examples of App Templates for Microsoft Teams

Appointment manager

Create, manage and conduct virtual appointments with Appointment Manager. Each appointment is associated with an online Teams meeting, meaning the staff and consumers can easily join the meeting at the scheduled time.

The app template integrates with Microsoft Bookings for easy appointment management. Scheduled appointments appear automatically on assigned staff members’ calendars, and consumers receive customisable email notifications and reminders with embedded meeting links. 

Available on Github 

Associate Insights 

Associate Insights is a Power Apps template that empowers, commonly support staff, to directly capture and submit customer opinion, sentiment, and perception. 

The collected data can be shared and used collaboratively by business teams, e.g., via a Power BI Teams tab, for product improvement and enhancing the customer experience. 

Available on GitHub 

Employee Training

Employee training is a Microsoft Teams app that enables organisers to easily publish, track, and promote learning and training events for your organisation. The app allows event planners to send reminders and notifications to event registrants and staff.

Employees can indicate an interest in upcoming events, stay updated on current events, and share event details with colleagues via the Teams messaging extension. 

Available on GitHub 

As you can see, App Templates for Microsoft Teams provide numerous benefits and are quick to deploy to your users. We encourage you to check out the App Templates available and see if they can help you in boosting productivity within your organisation. 

Our expert team are highly skilled in Office 356 and are here to help. If you’d like to know more about App Templates or need more information on Microsoft Teams, get in touch.