Adding and Using Apps #
Video Transcript: #
Now in previous sessions, we’ve shown you how drag documents and PowerPoints and spreadsheets and whatnot into the conversation, but there are a lot of other applications that we rely on. Okay. So I’m going to turn it over to Wes for him to show you how to go about doing exactly that.
Absolutely, we’ll do a little driving around inside a Teams here. So we’re going to talk a little bit about extending Teams and adding different applications into a channel along with customizing, our toolbar up here at the top of the channel.
So I’m currently in the go to marketing channel, in our Team’s demo environment.
You’ll notice I’ve got all kinds of things that are across the top bar. If I scroll across, I’ve got a list of files that have been shared. You know, I’ve got a PowerPoint presentation here, that’s a product roadmap that’s going to show us what’s going on. Actually that was an Excel spreadsheet and we’ve got some planner stuff that’s plugged in.
So this this specific channel, the go to market plan in the market project team has been pretty highly customized and they’ve added all the information that the, the members of the team that that work in this channel need in order to do their jobs.
So, we’re going to go over how do we do these things up here? And how do we add and remove? So, I’m going to go to the market project team general tab, and you’ll notice at the top here. I don’t have much and I’ve just got posted files. So I’m going to start out with the extending functionality within the channel with some applications that allow us to go out and pull some things in.
So, if I go down here and I click on my ellipsis bar, and in my search here, I’m gonna search for the word news. So one of the applications that’s included with Teams is Bing News. If I click on the news app here, choose to add it to my channel, and this is going to go out and install the news app for any user that utilizes this channel.
So now that I’m in the channel, I happen to be a Miami Heat fan, I can search for my Miami Heat or any other news term. Hey, it looks like all is good and the Heat are on their way to the playoffs. So I can choose that news story and send it out to the channel. Once I’ve installed the news app, I can now just do @news from inside the channel here and hit space.
And now I’ve got the search term, right? So if I wanted to, you know, maybe I wanted to see what’s going on with the Dolphins as well. I know they’ve been having some wide receiver problems so I could pop up here and actually looks like they’re having some problems with their offensive line and they got some challenges. So I can go out and find that news story and share that as well.
Some of the other ones that are included that can be useful, there’s a weather application that’s included so we can install that guy. So I can choose weather and it is weather from the list because it’s not been installed before.
I’m gonna choose to to add it and install it for all my users. Now, I can just put in a zip code, so I happen to be in Boynton Beach. I put in the zip code and I hit send and it dumps to the weather forecast directly in.
Both these are linkable. So if I were to click on the more details. It’s gonna dump me out to a web browser, and I’m now looking at that specific story or the weather from MSN.
Something that could be even more useful for you. There’s a Bing images app, I can type on images and grab my Bing images.
If you’ve never used the Bing image service, integrated into a lot of the office 365 applications, you might have seen it before in PowerPoint. So, once I add the images app, I can now search, say, if someone’s birthday, and it will go out and find for you royalty, free images that you can use in your PowerPoint presentations.
In addition to having fun inside of Teams, so I’m gonna pick something here. Seems like we’ve got lots of kids. Maybe I’m just gonna look for something with birthday cake, and then I can send that image right into my channel.
So those are some of the extensions that I have down here that allow me to extend the chat functionality.
Once I have them installed, I can do add images and do this. Follow the same kind of thing. As soon as I hit spacebar, I’ve got my search, it pops up and I can now go out and search for images again.
On the bar across the bottom. It looks like the Bing news and the weather, those are becoming now parts of the icon bar at the bottom.
Yeah. So the Microsoft integrated applications that I’m installing turn into icons across your toolbar in your chat. So just like, I’ve got, you know, if you remember from the first example, or our first session, we went over, you know, the the full text editing with rich, text and bullets, and stuff. Just like it’s down there. We’ve got the same kind of thing for either Bing news or the weather or images.
So, now let’s go up in. We want to customize our toolbar up here at the top. So I’m gonna go up and I’m gonna click on the plus button right here.
The first thing I’m gonna look at is a SharePoint document library. So if I want to add a SharePoint document library to the top of the channel, I could choose it from my list and the pop-up I’m gonna choose on the document library, it’s going to show me all of my sites that I have access to, I’m in the market project team.
So, I’m going to choose that SharePoint site. Grant it. Click on the next button. And then it’s going to show me any document library that’s in that SharePoint site that’s available. So, I’m going to choose this document library. I’m going to click on next. I have the ability to name the tab if I want to get have it say something other than document library, you know, maybe I might add a different library down the road. I’m gonna go ahead call this mark 8, document library. So everyone knows about it. Gonna keep this box checked right here to post about it to the the channel. So when I do that, it’s gonna send out a chat notification. Letting everyone know that it’s an added. I’m gonna click the save button and you’ll notice that is now added our tab with a SharePoint document library right here.
Now, I can drill down without having to open up a web browser without having to go to SharePoint and log in, it’s integrated into my Team’s experience, straight to my document library.
I go back to my posts, you’ll see here that it notified everyone in the channel that Megan my user that I’m logged in, as has added this document library to the top of the channel. So some other things you might consider adding to the top of the channel.
There’s one for YouTube. So you have a specific YouTube video that you wanted everyone to see and we can add the YouTube channel. So I’m gonna click on YouTube going to add it so that it’s available now. It’s going to give me an opportunity to go out and search for a video. I’ve actually already got a URL that I want all my users to see.
It’s some tips and tricks on usually utilizing Outlook being more efficient with your time. So I’m going to go and head and punch in my YouTube URL, and hit the search button, it goes out and it finds that video for me. So I can now select the video, I’m gonna post to the channel about it, just like I did with my SharePoint document library and I’m gonna hit save and then I’m gonna quickly, hit pause, because it’s gonna immediately start playing this video.
I’m gonna save and now I’ve got my outlook training video here, so now, if I’m in my files, I’m in my post back here, you’ll see that it is now posted that if I go up here and I go to the, it actually names, the tab with the video, you’ll notice that.
Now I can just go in and everyone has the opportunity to watch that YouTube video that I wanted to, to make sure everyone saw.
Some other things you can add, a SharePoint page itself. So if I wanted to add a link to a SharePoint list that I may have created and a SharePoint site that I want to make sure everyone sees and go here.
I could choose SharePoint, I’m gonna go to lists and I got design ideas and that’s a list that I want to have and now I’ve got that the SharePoint list that has been integrated and I can continue to add things. You’ll notice that there’s icons for Excel, Vizio diagram, a PDF file, a OneNote notebook, a Microsoft form. So all of these things can be added as a tab and integrated across the top.
Additionally, if I click on more apps, you’ll notice it takes me to that application tab over here on the left. And this is where we have the opportunity to integrate third party applications, not just applications for Microsoft and you’ll notice that there are tons of these on that are available.
They would require you to have it, an account with whatever application you’re choosing. But if you have that you can pick and choose an integrate them directly into your channel.
So another cool thing that often happens for me is you know, I’ll get an email, it’ll come in. Maybe it’s from a client maybe it’s from a vendor and I need to make sure that the team of people that I work with has an opportunity to see that email.
So, one of the things that Microsoft has done is they have chosen to give every single one of these channels inside of Teams it’s own direct email address. So if I go to any channel, I click the little three button ellipsis and I choose get email address. It will give me the email address that’s dedicated to that specific channel that I’m in. So, I’m gonna choose copy. Now I’m gonna go over to my Outlook web. We’ve been having a pet get together at the dog park. I wanna make sure everyone’s aware of it, so I can find the email message. I can click the little forward button.
I can paste the email address to the team channel that I got, in the previous step, I can now send that email. So when I do that, if I go back over to Teams through the power of the Internet, we’ll give it a second or two here and then you’re going to see that email is just going to pop right in and fill into the channel.
And now that email that I just sent is popped over and it’s here for everyone to look at. Now, I can use our special app channel notification and let everyone know.
So, that’s how we can integrate an email directly into a Team’s channel, using the three dots and the email address.
That’s dedicated to that channel.