Build 2020: Microsoft Teams and Power Automate come closer together

Arif Bacchus

Microsoft Teams

At its Build 2020 developer conference, Microsoft announced some updates for Teams. The company detailed that Teams and the Power Platform will soon integrate closer together, to promise more powerful apps, bots, flows, and dashboard.

With the closer integration with Power Apps, Microsoft hopes that app creators will be able to build model-driven apps for Microsoft Teams. More specifically, new Power Automate triggers coming later this summer in July (specifically designed for Teams) will allow flow creators to better customize the Teams experience for their users.

Some of the capabilities delivered will be custom message extensions and allow for automated @mentioning and a customized bot experience. Some other changes coming can be seen below.

  • Bot creators will have an easier time creating and managing their bots for Teams with the new Power Virtual Agents Teams app, too, which will be available in the Teams Apps Store in July.
  • A bot built with Power Virtual Agents can be easily added to Teams with just one clic
  • A FAQ bot template will soon be available for download on GitHub.

In addition, Microsoft is also bringing Power Virtual Agents and Power BI tools to Teams. This means that in June, developers will see a simple “one-click” add to Teams experience in Power Apps, Power BI, and Power Agents. Finally, later in July, single sign-on for Power Virtual Agents bots will be available. This means that users will no longer need to sign in again when using a Power Virtual Agents bot in Teams.