Microsoft Teams users is now able to access a variety of custom and third-party applications during video meetings, removing the necessity to switch screens mid-conversation.

On the list of 20 apps available with Teams Apps for Meetings are task administration apps from Monday and Asana.com, polling equipment and Polly Slido, and video job interview software from Talview and HireVue. Microsoft’s own Types app can be accessible and the business is encouraging programmers to build their very own integrations for Groups video, in accordance with a Microsoft blog post Mon.

Although Microsoft currently has some 700 roughly third-party and Office 365 apps that integrate with Groups chat, the integrations for video meetings are brand new. They serve exactly the same basic purpose, however; much like traditional app integrations, Groups Apps for Meetings shall allow users perform simple interactions without changing focus throughout a video meeting. That means co-employees discussing the improvement of a project can truly add a fresh action in Asana rapidly, for example, without interrupting the discussion.

The announcement follows rival Zoom’s proceed to add added third-party integrations to its video platform. Zoom announced its “Zapps” integrations at the Zoomtopia meeting last month, having a wider selection of third-party apps, including Slack, Salesforce, Coda and dropbox.

Microsoft’s addition to Groups “mirrors” Zoom’s very own platform-based method, said Raul Castanon, the senior analyst at 451 Analysis/S&P Global Market Cleverness. Both vendorsare now wanting to enhance the worth of these respective tools by experiencing external applications.

It’s a strategy pioneered by Slack, which includes benefitted from allowing clients to connect apps of these selection to the chat-based collaboration system.

“At a higher level, the platform-based approach displays the necessity for a lot more integration across company applications,” said Castanon. “It is a market necessity that is building up for quite some time, largely because of the growing amount of applications that information workers (and increasingly, job and service workers aswell) require to obtain their work done.” Microsoft

The Now Virtual Broker app by ServiceNow can improve employee efficiency with seamless self-services and faster case quality.

451 Research’s latest Voice of the Business: Workforce Efficiency and Collaboration survey implies that 25% of respondents believe siloed information across various applications may be the biggest obstacle to a team’s success. Other worries include apps not really integrating (24%) and needing to use way too many apps (24%).

The platform method of video meetings could enable Microsoft to put Teams as a “central hub for employees and teams to obtain work completed,” said Castanon, “providing usage of different business applications, communications and workflows tools.”

Power System for Teams

On the list of other Teams announcements may be the general option of Power System apps within the collaboration app.

PowerApps for Teams helps it be simpler to create simple, low-program code applications making use of app templates, while Strength Virtual Agents for Groups enables the development of chatbots users may connect to in Teams.

Microsoft’s workflow tool, Energy Automate, is now available also, letting Teams customers automate repetitive procedures to reduce time allocated to mundane tasks. Customers can make “flows” by selecting parameters from the dropdown menu, with 50 templates – like the ability to publish a note to welcome a fresh team associate joining a Groups channel or blog post a notification in Groups when a Forms reaction is submitted.

“This may have a significant effect on team and employee productivity,” said Castanon.

Lastly, Dataverse for Teams, the low-code data platform that connects to Strength Platform apps, is currently generally available also.