Please be advised that this project is currently in preview, with a lot of bugs, and work left to do before it's ready for production. Please expect breaking changes as we continue to iterate. We really appreciate your feedback, they really make the product better. Thank you!

Microsoft Teams Toolkit for Visual Studio

The Teams Toolkit helps developers create and deploy Teams apps with integrated Identity, access to cloud storage, data from Microsoft Graph, and other services in Azure and M365 with a “zero-configuration” approach to the developer experience.

What are Teams app “Capabilities”?

Teams apps are a combination of capabilities and entry points. For example, people can chat with your app's bot (capability) in a channel (entry point).

Tab

Tab are Teams-aware webpages embedded in Microsoft Teams. They are simple HTML tags that point to domains declared in the app manifest and can be added as part of a channel inside a team, group chat, or personal app for an individual user.

Bot

Bots allow users to interact with your web service through text, interactive cards, and task modules.

Messaging Extension

Messaging extensions allow users to interact with your web service through buttons and forms in the Microsoft Teams client.

Build a Teams app in less than 5 minutes

Build a Teams app from the scratch using the included Microsoft Teams App project template using C# and Blazor.

Prerequisites

Verify you have the right prerequisites for building Teams apps and install some recommended development tools. Read more details.

	Visual Studio 2019 This extension currently requires Visual Studio 2019 with the ASP.NET and web development workload installed.
	M365 The Teams Toolkit requires a Microsoft 365 organizational account where Teams is running and has been registered.
	Azure The Teams Toolkit may require an Azure account and subscription to deploy the Azure resources for your project.

Don’t have a M365 to experience building Teams app? Sign up for Microsoft Developer Program, which allows you to have a testing tenant with preconfigured permissions.

Getting started

After installing the Teams Toolkit extension, follow the Get Started instructions in our documentation. Or, follow along below.

Create your project

Create your app project using the following steps:

• First, make sure to close all open instances of Visual Studio 2019.
• Click the Download button above start downloading the extension.
• Once complete, open the Microsoft.VisualStudio.TeamsToolkit.vsix file to start the installation process.
• Follow the installation instructions and install for Visual Studio 2019.
• After installation is finished, launch Visual Studio 2019.
• Click Create New Project and search for the Microsoft Teams App template.
• Follow the steps in the dialog to create your project.
• Review the instructions in the GettingStarted.txt, included in the project.

Configure your app

At its core, the Teams app embraces three components:

• The Microsoft Teams client (web, desktop or mobile) where users interact with your app.

• A server that responds to requests for content that will be displayed in Teams, e.g., HTML tab content or a bot adaptive card.

• A Teams app package consisting of three files:

  ✔️ The manifest.json.

  ✔️ A color icon for your app to display in the public or organization app catalog.

  ✔️ An outline icon for display on the Teams activity bar.

When an app is installed, the Teams client parses the manifest file to determine needed information like the name of your app and the URL where the services are located.

• To configure your app, select the Project > TeamsFx > Configure for SSO menu to setup your project in a single click.
• (optional) Edit details about your app in the Properties/manifest.json file. Use the Project > TeamsFx > Update Teams Manifest menu to submit changes to the Teams Developer Portal.

Preview your app on your local/remote dev environment

Prerequisites: Enable Teams developer preview mode

🚀 Simply press F5 to run your first Teams app. As a default, the toolkit will automatically launch your app in Teams using the configured browser.

When prompted, select Add app in Teams to see your app running inside Teams.

Feedback

We really appreciate your feedback. It will help us continue making improvements together!