Azure Web App – Integrate Microsoft Teams Channel and show Conversation highlights with MS Graph API endpoints

This article helps you out integrating the Microsoft Teams channel data into custom web applications. Assume an use case, web application has channel mapping, where the app interface needs to show the highlights of latest conversations from respective team channels.

Currently the graph endpoint which exposes the channel messages is beta and available as protected endpoints.

Note: Microsoft Team restricts more sensitive data, and integrate the endpoints if there is a need. Please read out the following notes for the integration guidance.

• This article little focuses on information about integrating protected APIs. As of today, Microsoft has restricted integrating some of their beta APIs. The protected endpoint list is shown here. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/graph/teams-protected-apis. 
• To enable the protected APIs for integration, you would need to reach out to Microsoft team for integrations. The request could be submitted through this form. https://aka.ms/teamsgraph/requestaccess. 
• The request is generally reviewed, approved and enabled over a timeline mentioned in the article. 
• The request form needs to be filled with tenant, Azure AD app (explained below) and other details. 
• Once the request is approved, you will get a notification over email confirming the API enablement within specific timeline. 

Azure AD App Registration and Configuration

Before submitting the request, an Azure AD app needs to be registered on the tenant. The use case requires to get the channel conversations. So, the following snapshot shows the configured and granted permissions. Apart from this configuration, the other key parameters needs to be configured.

• Enabling oAuth implicit flow. 
• Enabling implicit tokens 
• And providing redirect APIs. 

API permissions required for integration

Retrieve Office365 People data on MS Team Channels via Outgoing Webhook and Azure App Service

Here, let us see how office 365 people information can be integrated into Microsoft Teams, with the help of outgoing webhooks on Teams. The use case is to pull the people present at a location, on posting a message to a service from Microsoft Teams.  

This could be easily achieved with the help of outgoing webhook feature under teams. The webhook has to interact with a service to get data processed based on data posted. 

Why Outgoing Webhook?: The outgoing webhook is used here instead of incoming webhook, since the data needs to be retrieved only when it is required.

No BOT Framework, only Azure App Service: This article helps us to understand creating outgoing webhook services for Microsoft Teams, without creating BOT service/app. Here the intent of service is clear, so we are not leveraging the BOT framework, instead hosting a simple service with Azure web app. From azure web app, the people data is being pulled from Azure AD with the help of Microsoft Graph API.

Create an outgoing webhook for a Microsoft Team 

Locate a team under Microsoft Teams, and navigate to manage team. Under App, in the bottom right corner, you will find an outgoing webhook link. From the link, create a webhook.  

Outgoing Webhook creation on Teams

Azure Active Directory App Authentications

Azure AD App registrations provides ways for authenticating or authorizing the user custom applications which uses Azure AD, to access the data available on the Microsoft products/services.

Why Azure AD App Registration? You might have already worked with custom applications that uses Azure Control Service, which provides way for authenticating users to gain access to web applications and services. As ACS is getting deprecated, Microsoft provides ways for authenticating the applications and provides way for enabling permissions for users to access the data. 

(Source: https://cloudblogs.microsoft.com/enterprisemobility/2013/06/22/azure-active-directory-is-the-future-of-acs/)