Search for Documents from Microsoft Teams Channel Conversations

This article illustrates a sample for finding the documents available on a team, with keyword search from channel conversations. This is achieved with the help of outgoing webhook service, where documents from Team are being pulled with the help of Microsoft Graph API.
#Azure #GraphAPI #MicrosoftTeams #Office365

The following screenshot shows the list of documents retrieved sending the keyword via the channel conversation.

Finding documents from channel using outgoing webhooks

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

Setting up Microsoft Teams Shifts Schedule Reminders

This article will help us to setup reminders for Shifts on Microsoft Teams using Power Automate. This will help to understand how shift reminders are triggered to shift owners a day before the shift schedules, as gentle reminders.

Before getting into implementation, we will see short introduction of Shifts app. Recently Microsoft has retired the Staffhub service, and Shift app is available as replacement and is available as an app on Microsoft Teams.

Microsoft Team's Shifts App

Shifts App, as quoted on Microsoft documentations: The Shifts app in Microsoft Teams keeps Firstline Workers connected and in sync. It's built mobile first for fast and effective time management and communication for teams.

Shifts app lets users on Microsoft Teams to create necessary shift schedules, and assign/share the schedules with teams. Once the schedule is created and shared on Teams, users will be able to view the schedules on their Teams login.

• Currently, notifications are not working as expected. In my case, after sharing the schedule with a team, the notifications were not triggered to teams users. 
• The shift schedule is not currently synced up with calendars. 

Hope the above drawbacks would be addressed in the near future by Microsoft product team.

This article helps us to understand a reminder notification requirement, which I came across recently. Let us look at how to trigger reminder notifications to respective schedule owners a day before the shift schedule.

Create a necessary shift schedules and share it with teams on Microsoft Teams interface.

Microsoft Team Shifts App - Sample Shift Schedule

Ask Alexa to search for a Microsoft Team – Integration of Amazon Alexa Skill with MS Team using Azure Functions and Graph API

The article helps understand how to integrate your Amazon Alexa with Microsoft team using Azure functions and Microsoft Graph API. The use case demonstrated here is finding a team on Microsoft Teams via Alexa. You can implement plenty of use cases.

This requires the following components.

• Amazon's Alexa developer console for testing, and Alexa device for real demo.
• Azure Subscription - Azure function to host request/response code for Alexa device, which integrates with Microsoft Graph API
• Office 365 tenant - with Microsoft Teams enabled. 

Configure Skills on Alexa Console

From the Amazon Alexa console (https://developer.amazon.com/alexa/console/ask), create a custom skill. The following steps has to be created on the console.

• Create invocation utterance - This is the skill invocation keywords on Alexa. In my case, invocation would be “team finder”

Invocation your skill by saying team finder

Microsoft Teams List (Part II) – Building End-user interface on PowerApps to identify Membership Information

Let us see how to create an interface on Power Apps platform, listing down all the teams under office 365 Microsoft teams tenant, also enable options to join the team if user is already not a member.

In the previous article, we have seen the ways to identify the user membership information via Microsoft Graph API. Using these Graph API and information, we will build the user interface functionality.

• Microsoft Teams List (Part I) – Exploring MS Graph API to find the Teams membership information on Office 365 Groups - http://www.techwithnakkeeran.com/2019/12/microsoft-teams-list-part-i-exploring.html

Here, a simple app is built for end-users on Power Apps platform, which in turn connects to Microsoft Graph API data explained in the previous article. The below snapshot shows the end result.

Microsoft Teams List - Options showing if user is member of /or join team button