Wictor Wilen

Wictor Wilen is Product Leader at Microsoft. Former Microsoft Regional Director and SharePoint MVP, as well as an author and a well known international speaker

Announcing the retirement of yo teams
Microsoft Teams

Announcing the retirement of yo teams

(Cross posted, with some delay, from the Microsoft 365 Community blog) A farewell to the Microsoft Teams apps generator that kicked off the Microsoft Teams custom app development movement. Why we are retiring yo teams? Yo teams is a Yeoman generator that helps developers to create Microsoft Teams apps open source frameworks using TypeScript, based on a similar pattern as the widely successful SharePoint Framework stack. It was first created in 2016 by Wictor Wilén, a Microsoft MVP and Teams developer, as a way to simplify and streamline the development process for Teams apps.

Building apps for Teams, Outlook and Office with yo teams
YoTeams

Building apps for Teams, Outlook and Office with yo teams

Today at //Build we at Microsoft announced that the long awaited support for Collaborative apps in Teams Personal Tabs and Messaging Extensions now is available for usage in Office.com, Outlook and Outlook on the web. This update to Teams apps is based on the new Promise based Teams JS SDK version 2.0 and the just published Teams Manifest 1.13. Announcing Yo Teams version 4 Through the Microsoft 365 Platform Community (PnP) we have also released a brand new (preview) version of yo teams that supports both this new Teams JS SDK as well as the updated schema.

Happy 5th anniversary Yo Teams!
YoTeams

Happy 5th anniversary Yo Teams!

Five years! It’s been five years seen I first published the Microsoft Teams apps generator - yo teams, and in a few days we also have the 5th anniversary for the official Microsoft Teams launch. It’s been five very interesting years that has changed how we collaborate and communicate. It all started long before March of 2017. I had the opportunity to work for an organization that was one of the early adopters of Microsoft Teams, and driven by my curiosity I immediately saw that with this new tool had some amazing opportunities to create even better experiences for my customers.

Building a smart video light using ESP8266 and ESPHome
IoT

Building a smart video light using ESP8266 and ESPHome

Today I thought that I should step out of my normal blogging content and share some of my personal pet project and hobbies. I always been keen of tinkering, testing and building things - being software, hardware, or our house or garden. Over the last few years I’ve been trying to make as much things as possible “smart” in our houses, and particularly in my home office. This home automation project consists of tons of different third party options, but also quite a few devices and gadgets that I built myself.

Create a Collaborative App for Microsoft 365, that runs across Teams, Outlook and Office.com
Microsoft Teams

Create a Collaborative App for Microsoft 365, that runs across Teams, Outlook and Office.com

We’re getting closer to the holidays and we all like to both give and receive gifts at this time of the year. Here is an early Christmas gift from me, and the amazing Microsoft teams that’s been building out these new features, to all of you fantastic people out there. A few months ago Microsoft announced the capabilities where we can deploy Microsoft Teams apps and use them across other high-usage areas of Microsoft 365 and now those areas has been extended even further and covers Office.

Simple Teams Tab Single-Sign-On with Microsoft Graph
YoTeams

Simple Teams Tab Single-Sign-On with Microsoft Graph

When building applications for Microsoft Teams, the very first hurdle essentially all developers will try to jump over is the one with getting an access token to be able to communicate with Microsoft Graph. This is something that can be done fairly easy, if you know what to do, but requires you as a developer to connect a few dots. Over the last year this has become way easier, and there are a few great examples out there - you can find some great ones in the PnP Teams Samples.

Inside the Viva Connections desktop app, or BYO Viva app
Microsoft Viva

Inside the Viva Connections desktop app, or BYO Viva app

Yesterday Microsoft released the anticipated set of scripts required for you to add the Microsoft Viva Connections app to your Microsoft Teams environment. It’s a very simple approach that only requires you to download a PowerShell script, install the latest Microsoft SharePoint Online PowerShell module and then answer a set of questions, and voila you have the Viva Connections Desktop app ready for installation in Microsoft Teams. Note: as the time of writing this and testing the PowerShell script, I was not able to download the required SharePoint Online PowerShell module and received an error while running the script.

Team development for Microsoft Teams apps
Microsoft Teams

Team development for Microsoft Teams apps

When building software the most common scenario is that you have a team building the solution, application and/or service. You typically have front-end, back-end and full-stack developers, you have testers and designers, and more. However, working in a team is not always easy. Back in the days we could all have our software running locally and we just grabbed the latest version/commit and hacked away. For web applications the use of localhost worked just fine for almost everyone.