Big Microsoft Teams update brings new app integrations, commands, and more

By Dan Thorp-Lancaster
published

Microsoft is bolstering Teams with a new set of app integrations, commands, and much more.

Teams App Store

New features and controls are headed out to Microsoft Teams today in what Microsoft is calling the "biggest single release of new functionality" since Teams' initial release last year. In the latest update (opens in new tab), Teams users will find new ways to interact with and share information from their apps, a new Teams app Store, and support for app and slash commands.

One of the biggest additions in this release is the ability to include information from apps directly in your messages. "For example," Microsoft says, "you can search for a specific task in Trello, a work item in Wrike, or a weather forecast, and include an interactive card with that information into a message." This is in addition to a new personal apps space, which gives you a quick overview of your apps, items you've been assigned to across apps, and items you've recently accessed. Also included in your personal app space is "Who," which Microsoft says is a way for you to quickly search for people in your organization.

Teams App Message

Also in this update is a new Store for quickly finding the apps you need. You can easily search by name or category, as well as by the type of integration, whether it be bots, tabs or connectors. Once you've found what you're looking for, you can tell Teams to surface the app in a specific channel or in your personal app view.

Lastly, Teams now includes a couple of new command types. Now you can command apps from the search box with "@" commands. You can get started by typing "@" in the command box, and it will then surface a list of apps that you can query or command.

Additionally, Teams now supports slash commands. As you might expect, slash commands let you quickly perform actions by typing"/ followed by a specific action. For example, you can quickly set your status to "away" by typing "/away". For more, simply typing a slash will show you a list of commands at your disposal.

According to Microsoft, these features are rolling out starting today and they should be available in your Teams client "shortly."

Dan Thorp-Lancaster
Dan Thorp-Lancaster

Dan Thorp-Lancaster is the former Editor-in-Chief of Windows Central. He began working with Windows Central, Android Central, and iMore as a news writer in 2014 and is obsessed with tech of all sorts. You can follow Dan on Twitter @DthorpL and Instagram @heyitsdtl. 

9 Comments
  • I think Microsoft needs to make a slimmed down version of Teams available for free like OneNote. Slack already has their foot in the door for mindshare and it's largely due to their freemium model hooking people on the free version and convincing organizations to fork out for the premium features later.
  • While a free version may be nice for non-enterprise customers, their focus with teams was all about the enterprise. Adding Teams to the O365 suites was the perfect move to start out at. We were already using said suite therefore it was like we got Teams for free as it is which was a major selling point. The sell to higher ups basically boiled down to "We get this included with what we need for our email system or we pay extra for this". No brainer for them and makes me happy as well. Once the entire idea of Teams comes together a little better then I could see them making a prosumer version or opening it up to more people for free. Especially when they start pushing Teams into education even harder.
  • I didnt see anything on their roadmap for consumer facing stuff it was an enterprise meeting so that maybe why. What is on their roadmap is moving all skype for business features over to teams so its just one app for all collaboration.
  • Whats the build version of the new client?
  • your mom
  • Hopefully they would add the calling feature for W10M version.
  • Is anyone seeing these features yet? Tried to upgrade and no luck. Guess it will be soon.
  • I'm running into the same problem. I haven't seen this update pushed to any of the clients in the company yet.
  • Looks like it is somewhat of a staged or slowed roll out. Version is 1.1.00.1155 for the 64 bit desktop application. I got a weird message saying my Teams app was "glitching" (exact word it used) then it restarted itself and was updated. Weird way of doing it, espcially since 'check for updates' kept coming back with no updates. Guess we just have to be patient and let Microsoft update us... love that idea.