The Microsoft Partner Network is built on a commitment to continuous innovation. By working with forward-thinking developers across solution areas, we have the power to solve problems of all sizes for customers from every industry and organization on the planet. This week, we welcomed these partners, peers, and experts to Microsoft Build, our annual flagship event for developers. Over three days of sessions, the deep Microsoft roots in development were reflected through exploration of the latest in coding and app creation.

At Build, we announced more than 50 new products and features that open even more opportunities for partners to develop a new generation of app-based solutions. Many of these updates and innovations fall into several key categories:

• The impact of artificial intelligence (AI) and AI-assisted development to keep developers in their flow.
• The broad opportunity with Windows for developers, including new hybrid AI app patterns for new edge endpoints without walled gardens.
• Just as we’re keeping developers more productive, we’re introducing tech innovation that will help bring that same sense of flow more broadly across the organization with automation.

The past several years have demanded and created an even greater imperative for enhanced collaboration, and Microsoft has responded. By collaborating with our partners to deliver the best, most cutting-edge software solutions, we are better able to meet customers’ needs. We recognize the meaningful contributions of developers and independent software vendors (ISVs) to deepen the capabilities of the Microsoft ecosystem and are proud to invest in trusted cloud platforms for them to innovate and build on. In addition, Microsoft has also identified new opportunities for developers and partners to maximize user engagement and monetize their apps. As it relates to our Modern Work and Life solutions, these new increased capabilities for ISVs include:

New tools to build richer collaborative apps with Microsoft Teams

Developers and ISVs can boost the collaborative capabilities of their apps by enabling new Live Share experiences in Teams. Live Share lets virtual meeting participants interact directly in the Teams meeting window—simultaneously viewing, annotating, and editing content. Tooling for Live Share experiences is built on Microsoft Fluid Framework, allowing developers to build in these capabilities entirely client-side, with just a few lines of code.

Partners building Live Share experiences include Hexagon, which is reinventing how collaborative engineering reviews are done, Frame.io, an Adobe company, which is enabling synchronized, interactive reviews of video workflows, Skillsoft, which will deliver transformative learning experiences, and MakeCode, which is building interactive learn-to-code gaming scenarios.

New extensions to the Teams SDK are now available in preview and can be accessed at Teams Live Share.

New and updated Teams collaborative apps

ISV partners are empowering customers with collaborative apps in Teams that bring together communications, data, and business processes into a single organizing layer. Some of these new and updated apps include:

• The new Bosch Cognitive Service Maintenance app in Teams will allow frontline workers to identify spare parts quickly and easily through a captured image or text search. The app relies on Bosch’s Smart AI & Image Recognition Services and empowers collaboration within Teams. This new app will be available in July in the Teams App Store. 
• Figma, the collaborative design platform, is introducing a new app for teams to share, present and collaborate in real-time on Figma and FigJam files within a Teams meeting. The Figma app will be available this summer in the Teams App Store. 
• The MURAL app for Teams gives users a shared collaboration space directly in Teams, improving meetings and workshops with hundreds of templates and proven, guided co-working methods. MURAL is a Microsoft preview partner, and the MURAL app now works across Teams, Outlook and Office. 
• The Observable app for Teams brings customers’ data, context, and logic together in one place to uncover insights and accelerate data-driven decision making. Updates coming to the app in June will offer improved Teams notifications. 
• The new SAP S/4HANA operational purchaser chatbot provides users a conversational experience in Teams and integrates Microsoft Azure Active Directory authentication and Microsoft Graph APIs to coordinate with business partners directly from the bot.
• The ServiceDesk Plus Cloud app from ManageEngine, ZOHO’s enterprise IT management division, leverages Teams to streamline business and IT service delivery, manage and accelerate IT incident resolutions, and improve service experiences. Coming soon, the app will enhance its existing static Adaptive Cards with Microsoft Loop components.

Learn more about these solutions—we look forward to the apps coming to the Teams App Store in the future. I look forward to sharing more about several other capabilities and opportunities for partners across our portfolio at Inspire.

Teams App Store updates offer new ways for developers to grow user engagement in Teams

Several updates within the Microsoft Teams App Store to maximize user engagement and monetize their apps with more effective capabilities include:

• Improved discoverability in the Teams App Store with intelligent recommendations and app flyouts is now generally available. With enhanced contextual discovery capabilities, it’s even easier for developers to get their apps in front of the right users in the right context. Additionally, the Teams App Store now has improved editorial content and a “featured apps” section, making it easier for users to find apps that are relevant to their productivity and collaboration needs.
• APIs to configure in-app purchase, also now generally available, allow developers to make it easy for users to upgrade from free to paid subscriptions within their Teams apps. 
• New license management capabilities,in preview this summer,willallow customers to easily assign and track licenses for purchased Teams apps directly within Teams.

Learn more about these updates.

I look forward to sharing more news later this year at Microsoft Inspire. We are working on many additional capabilities across our broader platform for you to rapidly build and launch innovative solutions. Together, we will continue innovating without compromise, developing creatively, and building the next generation of apps to deliver powerful solutions to our customers.