Build agents where work happens: chats, channels, and meetings in Microsoft Teams | DEM334
Umang Sehgal and Lily Du present a Microsoft Build 2026 session on building agents that work directly inside Microsoft Teams, across chats, channels, and meetings.
Overview
Agents are moving beyond standalone chat experiences. This session focuses on using the Teams SDK to build agents that can participate in the flow of work inside Teams, including:
- Chats
- Channels
- Meetings
The goal is to let agents automate tasks, surface insights, and take action in context—without pulling users out of Teams.
Session focus areas
Creating structured and interactive responses
The session highlights “Pillar Three: Polish” with an emphasis on making agent responses more usable inside Teams by:
- Returning structured responses (instead of only plain text)
- Using interactive UI patterns appropriate for Teams
“Manners” and in-context behavior
Lily introduces “manners” in detail—how an agent should behave in Teams so interactions feel natural and appropriate to the context (chat vs channel vs meeting).
Demonstration: NSYS agent scenario
The demo shows an agent participating in a threaded investigation inside Teams.
Confirming receipt and acknowledging actions
- The agent confirms receipt of a request using an emoji reaction.
Threaded investigation in chat
- A threaded investigation begins in chat.
Bidirectional private messaging
- The session calls out bidirectional private messaging.
- The agent can communicate publicly while maintaining private context.
Diagnostics, correlation, and rollback workflow
The demo includes an operational troubleshooting flow where the agent:
- Publicly communicates diagnostic status while keeping private context
- Returns to assess progress on a previous issue
- Correlates the issue with a production feature flag
- Supports a rollback request