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an Interaction & Visual Designer
 

Injecting rich content into the conversation

Microsoft Teams is a hub for workplace collaboration. But collaboration can’t happen in a silo and the most intelligent conversations center around objects, information and content. We wanted to construct an easy way for users to inject rich content without leaving the conversation.  

 
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The Challenge

Design rich content into the conversation

Goals

  • Make it easy for Users to issue commands and compose/reference/interact entities without switching contexts
  • Address competitive gap with Slack’s slash commands feature
  • Enable developers to create more deeply integrated experiences in Teams by making their app entities first-class messaging citizens

Enter the Messaging Extension

Messaging extensions appear along the bottom of the compose box. A few are built in, such as Emoji, Giphy, and Sticker. Choose the More Options (⋯) button to see other messaging extensions, including those that you add from the app gallery or upload yourself.

How would you use messaging extensions?
Here are a few possibilities:

Work items and bugs
Customer support tickets Usage charts and reports
Images and media content
Sales opportunities and leads.

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What you get

Messaging extensions generate cards. Cards are meant to provide easy to read, at-a-glance information that users can very quickly decipher and act upon when appropriate. As such, the guiding principle for designing great card is "content over chrome," which means cards are straight to the point and minimize the use of anything that would be distracting such as icons or custom colors.