Microsoft Teams: Now you can use meetings apps on your smartphone, too
Microsoft has expanded its apps for Teams meetings feature from the desktop to iOS and Android.
Microsoft announced its Teams apps for meetings feature for the desktop last November and updated its roadmap for the feature at its virtual Build 2021 conference in May.
Teams apps for meetings lets developers build apps that work across the full "lifecycle" of a meeting. Now, it's not just the desktop version of Teams that supports this functionality, but it's also on iOS and Android.
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The apps in meetings feature allows developers to customize Teams by integrating in-house apps into workflows around a Teams meeting.
"Now, with support on mobile, you can stay in the flow of work with apps through your preferred mobile device," said Microsoft's Jun Pak.
The mobile integration follows the same workflow as the desktop experience, allowing users to access the meeting app via a tab before and after a meeting. This workflow is designed to help people prepare for a meeting or follow-up tasks after a meeting.
Users can play with an app's content though the in-meeting panel, which could be used with a polling app to view different questions, and to submit answers to those questions in a meeting.
Teams meeting participants will also see notifications when new content is posted. These notifications show up as a banner on the top of the screen and can be seen by clicking on View.
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To access these features, Teams users need to be on Android from version number 2021031702; or iOS version 2021032701.
The Teams apps for meetings features Microsoft unveiled at Build 2021 included:
- Shared stage integration (now in preview), which gives developers new access to the main stage in a Teams meeting
- New meeting event APIs (now in preview), designed to automate meetings-related workflows through events (meeting start, meeting end, etc.)
- Together Mode extensibility (coming this summer), which will let developers create custom scenes for Teams meetings and share them with users
- Media APIs and resource-specific consent (coming soon), which will give developers real-time access to audio and video streams for transcription, translation, note-taking, and more