Working with Teams in the Microsoft Graph

It’s not stunning that Teams has become a single of the fastest increasing apps in Microsoft 365. Lockdowns and work-from-dwelling policies during the recent pandemic have pushed collaboration applications such as Teams to the fore, generating them the substitute for all the interactions in the modern day place of work. Apps are now where by men and women go to work, to chat, and to share details about responsibilities and jobs, escalating from chat, to voice phone calls, to video conferences as essential.

Teams is additional than a conferencing and collaboration space. Like a lot of the Office suite, it is element of the Microsoft Graph, a set of APIs that presents entry to person and firm data saved in the Microsoft 365 cloud. The Microsoft Graph is additional than a storage layer, it is a way to interact immediately with the Office application suite and create new apps that can use the Microsoft 365 platform.

Making use of the Microsoft Graph to automate Teams

Making use of the Microsoft Graph, we can compose code that interacts immediately with Teams, programmatically developing collaboration areas and injecting information where by essential. That tactic lets us do issues such as linking Teams into IT administration applications, automatically creating a digital staff in response to an incident, populating it with the proper information from systems administration applications, and closing the staff and archiving any chat areas or shared information when the incident ends.

Automating Teams like this is additional than developing bots. It builds on current workflows by offering a place to seize information and details that might if not be lost in particular person-to-particular person chats. We usually eliminate potentially vital details in casual communication channels, where by it is neglected just before crafting submit-action reports and submit-mortem investigation. Automating interactions can enable be certain that remote personnel know that a job is waiting around for them and will allow you to keep track of that responsibilities are being concluded.

Performing with the Teams Graph APIs

Making use of the Graph to create a Workforce is easy enough, using the Microsoft 365 create_team procedure. The Microsoft 365 Graph APIs for Teams are all RESTful, and you can interact with them using SDKs or through your very own HTTP interactions. Making a new team involves a single Write-up procedure, setting the team name, no matter whether it is general public or non-public, and no matter whether it truly is obtainable in Outlook mail, alongside with configuring descriptions and nicknames.

Associates require to be extra by their Graph ID. It involves a separate question to get all those IDs just before you construct the Rest Write-up that results in the staff. As element of the question, you also require to define at the very least two staff customers as homeowners, with admin legal rights for the staff. You can only insert up to twenty customers when developing a team any supplemental customers will require to be extra using the insert_member API, with at the very least a a single-next delay involving each addition.

The API simply call returns the team ID, which is wanted for any graph interactions with the team. At the time you have a team in place, which can acquire some time, you can promptly convert that team into a staff using a single Write-up action, contacting a Graph API to take care of the conversion. All over again you’re offered with an ID, this time for your new staff. At the time you have completed using a momentary staff, your Teams admin can get rid of it manually or using the Graph APIs.

Making use of Graph Explorer to structure queries

It’s well worth using Microsoft’s Graph Explorer provider to examination out your Rest queries just before you put into practice them. Graph Explorer is a beneficial software that performs with the recent release API and any beta APIs that you’re contemplating using. It shows the two the construction of a simply call and any responses created by the API. By default, the Graph Explorer performs against a sample tenant, although you can log in and use it against your very own Microsoft Graph data.

The Microsoft Graph API addresses a lot additional than Teams, so your code can work with SharePoint to update libraries, take care of e-mail, and work with documents in OneDrive. For illustration, a aid app that automatically results in a response staff can alert staff customers by e-mail, stand up a SharePoint instance for developing any documentation that is wanted, place logs and other vital documents in OneDrive, and then attach them all to tabs in Teams, all set for use.

Deal with with the Graph, interact with webhooks

Microsoft endorses mixing Graph phone calls with Teams webhooks for your apps. The Graph API is very best for handling reduced-degree graph objects, such as users and teams. At the time you have all those in place, you can then use the API to question your Teams instance for information. Interactions with a staff by chat and by adaptive playing cards are very best carried through webhooks, using asynchronous phone calls in your apps. As Teams interactions are based mostly on occasions and messages, the combination of programmatic staff administration by Teams’ Graph API and webhook-based mostly occasions must give you the adaptability to create, run, and use dynamic groups as and when wanted.

Teams’ Graph integration is two-way applications designed to run inside Teams can work with Graph APIs, triggering actions in other Office apps or even out into line-of-business platforms such as Microsoft’s Dynamics 365 and the Prevalent Knowledge Support. Get the job done does not have to be massive, elaborate responsibilities that involve reams of documents or all-hands conferences, with a lot of what we do in the place of work (no subject our roles) damaged down into compact interactions generating up what is now regarded as microwork.

Microwork is a single of the sweet spots for apps such as Teams, and integrating with the Microsoft Graph opens up using it as an endpoint for a huge range of diverse apps, primarily when responsibilities are surfaced as Adaptive Playing cards inside user’s notifications. There’s no require for an application to expose itself in Teams immediately, so users aren’t flipped involving consumer ordeals. With adjusted work environments producing substantial anxiety, trying to keep cognitive overload to a minimum amount is vital, and surfacing responsibilities and details inside the familiar Teams atmosphere alongside social interactions is a in addition.

You’re not restricted to using reduced-degree code with Teams. At Develop 2020 Microsoft announced that it would increase its Ability Automate integrations to Teams, supplying you a reduced-code route to adding Teams as an endpoint to business method automation. With Teams presenting the two structured and advertisement-hoc collaboration, it needs a way to provide applications that aid the two approaches of doing work: a design that performs effectively with centralized Microsoft Graph-based mostly apps and staff and workgroup automation from the Ability Platform.