Automation is everywhere, but it's only as good as how you use it. With thousands using Microsoft Teams every day, there are many ways you can use automation to speed up your workflows and get the most from your tech.
In this post, we introduce the best service automations you can use in Microsoft Teams today.
How do you automate tasks in a team?
The best way to automate everyday tasks in Microsoft Teams (in both channels and chats) is to add the apps you use most to Teams.
The Teams app store has over 600 known integrations with external apps as well as native integrations with other Microsoft 365 apps like Word, PowerPoint, Forms, etc.
You can also create custom automations to trigger actions based on certain behaviours. Platforms like Zapier help make this simple to administer.
We have rounded up the best Microsoft Teams automation so you can find the best Microsoft Teams automation for you.
Copilot
Microsoft 365 Copilot brings a layer of intelligent automation and productivity enhancements directly into Teams (and the rest of your Microsoft 365 suite).
With Copilot enabled, you can ask natural-language prompts to summarise meetings, highlight key discussion points, capture action items, and generate follow-up tasks — no manual note-taking required.
It also helps in chats and channels by quickly reviewing conversation threads, surfacing decisions, and drawing attention to important messages so you don’t have to scroll through long threads.
If your organisation has Copilot licenses, you can simply add it from apps in Teams.
Approvals
Rather than waiting for team members to get back to the office or check the status of work pending, you can use the Approvals workflow from within Microsoft Teams.
Approvals became generally available in January 2021 and are accessible via both channels and chats. You can create, approve, or reject a request all without switching to another app.
Built on the Power Platform, Approvals includes the intelligence to automatically route your approval through to other apps like ServiceNow and Azure DevOps. Regular approvers can add the Approvals app as a tab to their Teams menu so it’s always pinned on the left-hand side.
The Approvals app is also available standalone.
Workflows
When you add Microsoft Flow to any channel in Teams, you get access to the Flow bot.
Flow bot allows you to create a literal flow of information when something happens in Teams. For example, you can get an email every time someone mentions you in a specific channel. The trigger is the @ mention in a specific and the action is the email.
This is an ideal alternative to getting all @ mention notifications by default.
You can custom-create as many flows as you want. They can be simple like this example or as complex as you need them to be.
How to install Flow bot in Microsoft Teams:
To add Flow, go to Add a tab, then type Flow in the search box.
If your team members are already using Flow, it may appear in the top row as suggested tabs.
Choose Flow, then Save, and Flow will be embedded as a tab in Teams.
Zapier
Zapier is an integration platform with over 3,000 “Zaps” created for Microsoft Teams.
Like Flow bot, Zapier works on a trigger and action basis. For example, when an attendee signs up to your event on Eventbrite, you can receive a message in a specific Teams channel. The sign-up in Eventbrite is the trigger, and the channel message in Teams is the action.
Some of the apps you can connect Teams to using Zapier include:
Google Calendar
Miro
Spotify
HubSpot
Typeform
Amazon Alexa
Discord
Salesforce
Pipedrive
Many, many more
Slack
Recognising your business uses collaboration apps other than Microsoft Teams is one thing. Doing something to maximise efficiency is another.
If you have a pocket of users who prefer Slack in your organisation, it might be tempting to try and migrate them all over to Teams. But what happens when they have a Teams account but still use Slack? That's called shadow IT.
Rather than upsetting your Slack users, forcing them to learn a new messaging app, and likely ending up with ungoverned apps, you can use the Mio app to automate messages between Teams and Slack.
When someone sends a message from Teams to a Slack user, Mio translates the message cross-platform, and everyone keeps chatting as if they were using the same app.
You can send messages in both channels and chats. All messaging features like emojis, reactions, GIFs, edits, and deletions are supported too.
Webex
If your business has Webex users alongside your Teams users, you can automate cross-platform messages like the Slack example above with the Mio app, too.
Each time you need to message a user who prefers Webex – and likely doesn’t check Teams on a regular basis – you can send a message in Teams, and they will receive it in Webex.
Again, any messages that get edited or deleted will be reflected on both platforms. Message threads, GIFs, and emojis are all supported.
And if you have users of both Webex and Slack alongside your Teams users, you can create channels or chats with all three platforms included.
Teamwork Analytics
Nasstar created Teamwork Analytics to proactively tackle threats and identify opportunities across your Teams environment.
From call quality issues to adoption misfires, Teamwork Analytics provides automated actionable insights to drive organisation-wide adoption while ensuring Teams governance, security, and control.
When you sign up to Teamwork Analytics, you get access to usage, performance, and governance statistics on the back end. But you also get automated notifications to prompt encouragement of the use of collaboration, video, or personal activity reports.
Using Power BI reports, Teamwork Analytics identifies trends based on the number of users, guest access, etc, and informs whether you’re in compliance with your rules and performance expectations.
For example, you don’t want someone using their PC mic and speakers when they could be using a Teams-certified headset. In this example, when poor call quality is detected, automation can be sent via email or via direct messages in Teams.
automate.io
automate.io is a Zapier alternative that connects Teams with over 200 different apps listed in its library.
Some apps like Wrike and FreshBooks are listed as “coming soon”, but automate.io already integrates with apps like:
Trello
PayPal
Xero
Asana
HubSpot CRM
Salesforce
Todoist
Stripe
Google Tasks
Jira and Microsoft Teams integration? Get notified on Microsoft Teams of new issues in Jira
Popular automations on automate.io include getting Teams notifications when a new issue is entered into Jira and creating new Trello cards from messages in specific Teams channels.
By using these automations, you remove the need to switch between applications when you’re busy working.
AVA
If there was ever something that needed automating in Teams, it’s retrieving files that are lost or deleted.
AVA (AvePoint Virtual Assistant) was launched in 2018 to restore any deleted files within the Microsoft 365 realm. AvePoint says the virtual assistant will “automatically perform a search based on the user’s permissions in Exchange, Outlook, and OneDrive’s recycle bin to restore the requested item.”
All you need to do is download AVA from the Teams app store and start chatting with the virtual assistant.
AvePoint notes you can use AVA to help find:
Filenames that can’t be found
Recently modified documents
Broken URLs to documents and files
Lost emails that can’t be searched in Microsoft Exchange/Outlook
Existing files in mailboxes and OneDrive
Connectors
Built into Microsoft Teams are connectors that can be used to deliver bulletin-style updates to specific channels.
What’s the difference between a connector and posting a regular message to everyone in a channel? Good question.
With connectors, you can automate the pulling of status updates from apps outside the Microsoft world. For example, when a Trello card gets updated, you can get an update in Teams. Or if you want your latest GitHub updates without leaving Teams and hunting for them, they can automatically appear in your chosen channel.
Adding a connector to a channel is simple:
Click the … icon on the channel you wish to connect an external app to
Choose Connectors from the drop-down list
Select the connectors you wish from the pre-populated list of approved apps
Add a name for your connector
The address your connector must pull from (like twitter.com/Nasstar)
Choose how often you’d like to receive updates
Click Save
When using connectors, you can connect to apps like Twitter, Bing News, Yammer, RSS, Jira, and plenty more. These are all examples of apps that post “updates”.
When connected to Teams, you automate your news and status updates straight into Teams.
