Extend Teams with Apps and Custom Tabs

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About this lesson

Extend what your teams can do by adding apps and creating custom channel tabs. 

Quick reference

Extend Teams with Apps and Custom Tabs

Extend the capabilities of Teams with Apps. 

When to use

We add apps to Teams to extend what we can do within the application. 

Instructions

There are hundreds of apps that can be added to Teams to extend what team members can do. For example, maybe we want to create a team notebook to collaborate on. Or maybe we want to create polls or team task lists. We might just want a simple Excel spreadsheet. 

We can add all of these things using Apps. 

Use an App in a Conversation

Maybe we want to create a poll in a channel to get feedback on an idea from other channel members. 

  • Go to a channel. 
  • Click New conversation. 
  • Click the three dots. 
  • In the Search area, type Poll. 
  • Choose Polly from the list. 
  • Select Coworkers or Employees. 
  • Select Collect General Feedback.
  • Select Vote. 

We can now create our Poll. We have a choice of posting a multiple-choice question, an open-ended question, or a rating. 

  • Select Choice. 
  • Type in the question 'What color should the new logo be?'
  • Enter the choices: Red, Green, Blue, and Yellow. 
  • Select the options you require for the poll. 
  • Check the information is correct. 
  • Click Send now. 

Add an App to a Channel Tab

If there is an app that we use frequently, we may want to add it as a channel tab so it's easily accessible to all channel members. Let's make Polly a permanent fixture in the channel. 

  • Go to a channel. 
  • In the tabs area, click the + symbol. 
  • In the search area, type Polly. 
  • Select the app. 
  • Click Save. 

We can also access Apps from the main navigation menu, simply click the three dots and search for an app. To see the full list of Apps, click the Apps button in the navigation menu.

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  • 00:04 We can extend the capabilities of teams by adding apps to chats, channels and teams.
  • 00:09 For example, maybe every Monday your team meet to
  • 00:14 discuss the upcoming tasks for that week.
  • 00:17 What we could do is add the app for
  • 00:19 Microsoft Planner and create group to-do lists.
  • 00:23 And then everybody who's a member can collaborate on that to-do list.
  • 00:27 Or maybe we want a more feature rich way of taking notes.
  • 00:32 For that, we could think about adding the OneNote app, entertains.
  • 00:37 Or maybe we want to pose a question to a channel or in a conversation.
  • 00:43 So we might want to add some kind of polling app to teams as well.
  • 00:47 And there are hundreds of different apps that you can add into teams to
  • 00:51 really extend the types of things that you can do.
  • 00:54 So let's take a look at a couple of examples.
  • 00:56 Now currently I'm in the Northwind Traders team and
  • 00:59 I'm clicked on the Marketing channel.
  • 01:02 And it might be that I want to post a poll to the Marketing channel
  • 01:07 asking people which color we should use for the new re brand of our logo.
  • 01:13 Now currently in teams I don't have any way of adding a poll.
  • 01:16 So I can add an app to help me do that.
  • 01:19 So I'm going to start a new conversation and I'm going to click the three dots
  • 01:24 at the end which is going to allow me to search for an app.
  • 01:27 So I'm going to type in poll.
  • 01:31 And teams is going to present me with all of the apps that it can find related to
  • 01:35 polling or quizzes or questions.
  • 01:37 And which one of these you choose is entirely up to you.
  • 01:40 I'm going to go for the top one just here, Polly.
  • 01:44 So now I can choose my audience.
  • 01:47 Well, my audience is going to be my coworkers or
  • 01:50 employees because I'm posting this to the channel.
  • 01:54 What is my goal?
  • 01:55 Well, I want to collect general feedback and then I can choose a polly to create.
  • 02:03 Now I want people to vote on a specific logo color, so let's go with vote.
  • 02:09 And now I can choose if I want to offer them a choice, if I want to post an open
  • 02:14 ended question or if I want them to rate the logo colors, for example.
  • 02:20 Now I'm going to give them a multiple choice question.
  • 02:23 Let's enter in our question, and now I can give them some choices.
  • 02:26 So let's go with red, we'll say green.
  • 02:31 Let's add another choice of blue.
  • 02:35 And then finally at the bottom, we'll have yellow.
  • 02:39 I then have some options underneath.
  • 02:41 So if I want to allow people to select multiple items, I could do that.
  • 02:45 I could get my audience to add choices.
  • 02:47 So if I'm in a meeting, that might be appropriate, or
  • 02:50 I can allow them to add comments.
  • 02:53 And then underneath we have our poll setting.
  • 02:56 So it's going to deliver this poll to the Marketing channel for Northwind Traders,
  • 03:00 which is correct.
  • 03:01 Results visibility everyone in real time.
  • 03:05 So, yes, I want to see the results in real time as people vote in this poll.
  • 03:12 Responses from audience.
  • 03:13 Well, I can keep these anonymous or I can make them public.
  • 03:16 So I will see who has chosen which option.
  • 03:20 Now I'm going to keep these anonymous.
  • 03:22 I can specify when I want to send this poll.
  • 03:25 So I can either send it through now to the channel or I can schedule a specific time.
  • 03:30 So if I want this poll to be sent maybe 5pm on a Friday,
  • 03:34 just before people leave the office, I can set those options just here.
  • 03:39 And then I can choose when I want this poll to close.
  • 03:42 So I can set this to manual, which means I close the poll or
  • 03:46 I can set it to automatically expire.
  • 03:49 So I'm going to set this to one hour as it's just a test.
  • 03:53 Once I'm happy with my poll, I can click on Send Now.
  • 03:57 And that's going to send that poll through to the Marketing channel.
  • 04:01 And there we go, what color should we use for the logo?
  • 04:04 Well, I'm going to say red and Submit vote.
  • 04:08 And I've just seen that this has refreshed, so that means that somebody
  • 04:12 else has voted and I can see that they've gone for blue for this logo.
  • 04:16 I can view all results and because I've set this to anonymous,
  • 04:20 I'm not actually seeing who voted for what, I can just see the result.
  • 04:25 So that's how you can use an app within a conversation.
  • 04:29 But what about if I permanently want to make polls available?
  • 04:33 Well, I could choose to add it as a tab in the team channel.
  • 04:38 So notice at the top where we have Marketing, currently we have four tabs,
  • 04:42 Posts, Files, Wiki, and Branding.
  • 04:45 But if I click the plus, I can go in here and I can add a brand new app.
  • 04:50 And this is going to open up the full list of apps that are available in teams.
  • 04:54 And you can see that there are many, many available in here.
  • 04:59 We want to add the Polly app and I can see it just there.
  • 05:02 If I click it, it's basically going to create a brand new tab for polls.
  • 05:07 So let's click on Save and now I have a new Polly tab at the top.
  • 05:14 So if I want to create a new poll, I can click on create from over here.
  • 05:18 Choose my settings and them select which channel I want to post it to.
  • 05:22 And this is just a really nice way of keeping all of your polls past and
  • 05:26 present together, creating new polls and choosing where you want to post them.
  • 05:30 So if you do create a lot of polls, it's a good idea to add a channel tab as
  • 05:35 opposed to using the app each time you're in a conversation.
  • 05:40 Now when it comes to apps, also notice if we take a look in our menu right to
  • 05:44 the bottom where we have three dots, we can find an app from here as well.
  • 05:49 And if we want to see the full apps list,
  • 05:52 we have an apps button towards the bottom also.
  • 05:55 And this is going to show us all of the apps that we have available to add to
  • 05:59 teams divided down into different categories.
  • 06:02 So maybe I want to add the OneNote app.
  • 06:06 So here it is just here under the Microsoft section.
  • 06:10 Let's click on OneNote and I'm going to say add to team.
  • 06:16 So now I get to choose which team and channel I want to add this to.
  • 06:20 So I'm going to add it to the Marketing channel for Northwind.
  • 06:24 So when I start to type in marketing, it's going to pull up that channel and
  • 06:28 then I can choose Setup tab.
  • 06:31 And if you already have OneNote installed and you've been using it,
  • 06:34 it's going to show you your notebooks.
  • 06:36 And you can choose which one you want to set up the tab for.
  • 06:39 So I'm going to say Northwind Traders, let's click on Save,
  • 06:44 I now have a new tab at the top.
  • 06:47 And when I click on it, it's going to give me access to that specific notebook.
  • 06:52 So if you want to have a notebook for your entire channel to use and collaborate on,
  • 06:56 this is a really great way of doing it.
  • 06:58 Remember, if this name is a bit too long, you can click the drop down,
  • 07:02 and you can rename each of your tabs.
  • 07:04 So maybe I just want this to say, Notebook, then click on Save.
  • 07:09 So have a little experiment, have a look around,
  • 07:12 think about what's going to be important to your team and add apps accordingly.
  • 07:16 And remember, a great way of making them super easy to
  • 07:21 access is simply to add the app as a channel tap.

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