Build agents where work happens: chats channels and meetings in Microsoft Teams | DEM334
Umang Sehgal and Lily Du explain how to build agents that operate directly inside Microsoft Teams chats, channels, and meetings using the Teams SDK, focusing on structured, interactive responses and real-world workflow patterns like threaded investigations and status updates.
Overview
Agents are moving beyond simple chat experiences. This session shows how developers can use the Microsoft Teams SDK to build agents that participate in the flow of work across:
- Chats
- Channels
- Meetings
The focus is on building agents that can automate tasks, surface insights, and take action in context without pulling users out of Teams.
Session outline (from chapters)
Pillar Three: Polish – creating structured and interactive responses
- The session emphasizes improving agent responses so they are structured and interactive rather than plain text.
“Manners” and interaction patterns
- The presenters discuss “manners” for agents, including acknowledging user actions and communicating clearly in the conversation.
Demonstration: NSYS agent workflow inside Teams
The demo walkthrough highlights several Teams conversation patterns:
- Confirming receipt of a request using an emoji reaction
- Starting a threaded investigation in chat
- Bidirectional private messaging
- Publicly communicating diagnostic status while maintaining private context
- Returning to a previous issue thread to assess progress
- Correlating an issue with a production feature flag and requesting a rollback