Since the beginning of 2020, there has been a 10-fold increase in the number of monthly active users of custom-built or third-party apps in Teams, Microsoft’s communications platform, the company says.

At the recent Microsoft Build event, the company announced a host of new capabilities for developers building collaborative apps for Teams and Microsoft 365. 

“Independent software vendors (ISVs) are bringing innovative collaborative apps to Teams across a broad range of scenarios,” it said.

Here are five new apps coming to the platform:

MURAL app for Teams allows teams to bring a shared collaboration space directly into Microsoft Teams. 

They can use asynchronous visual collaboration for improved teamwork. There are also templates for “engaging meetings and workshops”. 

MURAL is a Microsoft preview partner, and the app works across Teams, Outlook, and Office.

Observable app for Teams allows companies to bring their data, context, and logic in one place.

This would enable them to “uncover insights collaboratively and accelerate data-driven decision-making”. 

“New updates coming to the Observable app in June 2022 will offer Microsoft Teams notifications when collaborating through comments in Observable,” the company said.

SAP S/4HANA operational purchaser chatbot provides the collaborative capabilities of Microsoft Teams to SAP S/4HANA users within a conversational user experience. 

It uses Microsoft Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) authentication and Microsoft Graph APIs to allow users to call other parties or schedule Teams meetings with business partners directly from the bot. 

“This provides tight integration of the Teams collaboration experience in a standalone app in SAP, bringing connectivity and collaboration where users need them,” it said.

ServiceDesk Plus Cloud app from Zoho’s enterprise IT management division, ManageEngine, uses Microsoft Teams to “streamline business and IT service delivery, manage and accelerate IT incident resolutions, and improve service experience across the enterprise”.

It will use Loop components to enhance existing static adaptive cards, which will allow everyone working on a ticket to get the latest updates and trigger service desk tasks without switching tabs.

Figma, the collaborative design platform, is introducing a new app that will enable teams to share, present, and collaborate in real-time on Figma and FigJam files within a Teams meeting. 

The app utilises the new adaptive card functionality. When a user shares a link to a Figma or FigJam file in a Teams chat, the card unfurls, allowing users to open the file from within Teams. 

Users can also view and respond to file notifications directly from Teams. The Figma app will be available later in 2022 in the Teams app store. 

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