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Azure Communication Services Adds Microsoft Teams Support for App Developers
Microsoft announced on Monday that Azure Communication Services now supports the Microsoft Teams collaboration service at the "general availability" commercial-release stage.
The integration of Azure Communication Services with Teams allows developers to build apps that are integrated with Teams capabilities, such as "audio, video and telephony." It's even possible to "bring Teams calling capabilities into devices that are not supported with the standard Teams client," the announcement indicated.
This general availability release of the Azure Communication Services integration with Teams specifically adds the ability to "get access tokens for Teams users" via a software development kit (SDK). It also specifically adds management for "Teams Voice over IP calls, Teams phone calls and Teams Meetings."
The announcement suggested that developers can use Azure Communication Services to "integrate calling capabilities" directly in their applications in a way that avoids "context switching" by end users. The integrated services could be used in apps for call centers, healthcare scenarios and "education-specific apps," the announcement suggested.
Apps using Azure Communication Services APIs can also leverage Microsoft Graph APIs. The Graph APIs permit the adding and managing of chats and meetings, as well as the deployment of "server and client side calling bots."
Azure Communication Services is actually based on Teams technologies, despite its Azure name, according to a video in this Microsoft document.
Azure Communication Services essentially is a bunch of "cloud-based services with REST APIs and client library SDKs available to help you integrate communication into your applications," the document explained. Developers can connect their apps to services such as voice and video calling, text chats and SMS messaging, plus e-mail using Azure Communication Services.
On top of REST API support, Azure Communication Services has support for "Web browsers (JavaScript), iOS (Swift), Android (Java), [and] Windows (.NET)," the document noted.
About the Author
Kurt Mackie is senior news producer for 1105 Media's Converge360 group.