What's new in Teams this week for developers

Microsoft Teams has gone GA for all Office365 users, and with that update, there are few new things that make it better for developers.  Today I will highlight two of them I noticed over the last week or so.

1.  Teams now has support or better support for HTML messages.

Prior the last update if you tried to post an HTML message using an office webhook your results were most likely less than stellar.  One simple table I tried to post a few weeks ago, had at least 3 inches of white space on the top and bottom of the message, so unless you clicked on the more button, it looked like a blank post with nothing there.  The title has also gotten a boost in contrast visibility.  Here is an example of before (top) and now (bottom).

You can see the font are bolder and easier to read.  HTML is still far from perfect, but here is what a table looks like after the GA update.

There is still a bit of white space at the top, but no enough to make the message appear blank, so the users will ignore it without looking closer.  It even seems to be honoring the table header tag as you can see at the top.  If you were hoping for full CSS support, it is not present, and there is no indication of when or if ever it will supported.  The marker is moving in the right direction at least, and one can hope the improvements continue.

2.  Direct Email Support

If you aren't a programmer, and would like a quick and dirty way to share information with your team, the inclusion of direct email support may be more your speed.  I will caution you I have seen very mixed results with this in regards to html formatted messages, but the good news is it does support eml message download which can viewed then by Outlook, which restores the original email look at feel.  To figure out how to email a channel, you simply click the 3 dots to be presented with the email address.

Once that page opens you can copy the address.  You can also go into advanced and specify who is allowed to email the Teams channel, everyone including people outside teams in the default.

Doug Routledge, C# Lync, Skype for Business, SQL, Exchange, UC, Full Stack Developer  BridgeOC Bridge Operator Console Twitter - @droutledge @ndbridge