Microsoft introduce two new PowerApps for Microsoft Teams companies

Today Microsoft launched two new apps built using the Power Platform designed to help companies using Microsoft Teams collaborate even better.

Bulletins and Milestones are designed to work out of the box with simple configuration options provided within the apps and can be easily be extended using the powerful low-code platform from right within Teams to meet the unique needs of your business.

Keep members of your team informed with Bulletins

Keeping your team informed of the latest company news and information is critical in normal times – even more so when team members are working remotely during the pandemic. The Bulletins solution empowers the communication team to share company or departmental news and information in a central place. News articles can be organized under categories and contain rich content, including images, videos, actionable buttons. Publishers can also view metrics for articles posted, such as view rates over time.

Team members can pin the Bulletins app on the left rail of Teams for easy access. They can customize their views by selecting categories they are most engaged in, and bookmark articles that interest them the most.

The apps are optimized for mobile scenarios. You can post new messages or consume these messages on a mobile device. This enables your frontline workers in the field to send and receive relevant information – such as weather alerts, system outages, etc.

Once installed, you have full access to the source code of these solutions. You can edit these apps using the Power Apps personal app in Teams to bring your own custom features – such as your company branding, adding proactive communications on new message posts etc.

This app is an evolution of a widely successful Crisis Communication template Microsoft released at the start of COVID crises. Hundreds of organizations around the world installed the app. The new iteration is significantly easier to implement, built on Dataverse for Teams database, and have several feature enhancements.

Get the app from the Teams store here.

Confidently track key initiatives with Milestones

Every day members from different functions get together to work on significant milestones. Successful delivery of the milestones relies on all team members staying informed of the work items and their status. Milestones improve collaboration for these cross-functional teams by creating a central place to track status and updates. This app can be pinned to the team’s channel or on the left rail for easy access.

The app enables you to track work items by owners and status. Updates to status are tracked in the activity log. The dashboard provides a 360 view of the overall project.

The value of the Milestones app is its extensibility. Every organization has a unique need from their project tracking software. Milestones app gives you the ease of low-code to customize this experience. You can update the fields’ labels, add new fields, or add business process flows such as notifications to work stream owners when there is a status change in the task.

Get Milestones from the Teams store here.

To learn how to customise and extend these apps for your business, see Microsoft’s tutorial: Use sample apps from the Microsoft Teams store docs.

Source: Microsoft