Microsoft Teams Crisis Communication App

No matter what industry you are in when a crisis arises, questions always come up about how to effectively address it. The most common challenge organizations face is how best to share real-time information and provide a platform for employees to connect and discuss.

Luckily, Microsoft Teams can help maintain connectivity to aid in that information sharing, especially while working remotely. Teams has also released a “Crisis Communication” app that is built with Microsoft Power Apps.  Customers can download, customize, and share with their organization.

The Crisis Communication app provides users with a single portal to help provide them with news, the latest information from government officials, recommendations from global health authorities, and company-specific content. Users can also share their individual work status with their teams and automatically send help requests to a dedicated channel in Teams.

This app can and will come in handy to your organization and employees. The first step is to follow the instructions for downloading the Power Apps App. Deploying the Crisis Communications app to Teams is a quick and easy way to gain broad adoption, centralize discussions, and amplify information across your organization. Find the step by step instructions from Microsoft below!

1. Download the app from the Power Apps portal

• On the Power Apps home screen, the Crisis Communication app will appear under “Your apps”
• Click the “…” to the right of the app name, then select the “Add to Teams” option

This will download a zip file which can be uploaded to Teams in the next step, so save the file to a location you can remember and easily access

2. Add the app to your Teams app store

• Once the app has been downloaded from your Power Apps portal as a zip file, open Teams and navigate to the app store. 
• Use the “Upload a custom app” function at the bottom-left to upload the zip file you downloaded from Power Apps in the prior step. 

Teams Admins will be able to upload this for their entire tenant, whereas non-Admin users will be able to upload this file for themselves and their teams.

3a. Pin the app to your organization’s Teams app bar (Teams Admins)

Teams Admins have a great opportunity to drive awareness and highlight the apps that their organization should be using.  As with any app, Teams Admins can use the Teams Admin Center to pin this app to the Teams App bar for their entire tenant.

• Under “Teams apps”, select “Setup policies”, and choose which policy to update (the “Global” policy, for example). 
• Now select “Add apps” under the “Pinned apps” section, and select the app to pin (based on the name you gave the app in Power Apps). 
• Shortly, all users in this policy will see this app appear on their Teams app bar. 

3b. Pin the app to your personal Teams app bar (any Teams user)
Even if your Teams Admin has not taken steps to add this app to the Teams app bar for your tenant, any user can add this app their personal app bar. 

• Simply open the app and once the app icon appears on your app bar, right click the icon and select “pin”.  The app icon will remain on your app bar to provide you easy access, even after you navigate away from the app.