Microsoft Teams: App Templates
Microsoft have kindly announced that they have released open source app templates for Microsoft Teams. These templates are available via GitHub and come with everything needed to get started – documentation and a deployment guide.
This morning I’ve scanned through the list of app templates that are available and the stand out ones for me are:
FAQ Plus
Conversational Q&A bots are an easy way to provide answers to frequently asked questions by users. However, most bots fail to engage with users in meaningful way because there is no human in the loop when the bot fails. FAQ bot is a friendly Q&A bot that brings a human in the loop when it is unable to help. One can ask the bot a question and the bot responds with an answer if it is contained in the knowledge base. If not, the bot allows the user to submit a query which then gets posted in a pre-configured team of experts who are help to provide support by acting upon the notifications from within their team itself.
HR Support
HR Support bot is a friendly Q&A bot that brings a support professional/expert from the HR team in the loop when it is unable to help. One can ask the bot a question and the bot responds with an answer if it is contained in the knowledge base. If not, the bot allows the user to submit a query which then gets posted in a pre-configured team of experts who are help to provide support by acting upon the notifications from within their team itself. Additionally, the bot suggests links to recommended HR policies/questions by searching for pre-configured tags in the question. These tiles can also be found in the associated tab as a quick reference. HR Support works well for light weight QnA and to provide quick support when launching new projects/initiatives in the organization.
Expert Finder Bot
Expert Finder is a Microsoft Teams bot that identifies specific organization members based on their skills, interests, and education attributes. Members find experts within an organization that match a keyword search of Azure Active Directory user profiles.
Book-a-room bot
Book-a-room is a Microsoft Teams bot that lets users quickly find and reserve a meeting room for 30 (default), 60, or 90 minutes starting from the current time. The Book-a-room bot scopes to personal or 1:1 conversations.
Attendance bot
The attendance app is a Power Apps tab that can be pinned in a team. It is designed to record presence, typically in settings such as learning and training environments. Users can mark or edit attendance for up to 30 days in the past and view summarized attendance reports for an entire group or individual attendees.
The ones that really excite me are the FAQ Plus and HR Support, previously I used qnamaker.ai to create FAQ bots.
Click here to see the full list of the templates that Microsoft have announced.