The two companies have partnered to ease collaboration for shared customers, with a video streaming integration also in development and due early next year.

Microsoft Teams users can now access newsfeed updates in Meta’s Workplace enterprise social network without switching screens, thanks to a new integration announced by the two companies Wednesday. And plans to enable streaming of Teams video calls directly from Workplace are also in the works.

The integrations are the first between Microsoft’s workstream collaboration tool and Workplace, which has more than 7 million paid subscribers. (There are already existing Workplace integrations with Office 365 apps, including Microsoft SharePoint and OneDrive, with support for Teams on the Meta (formerly Facebook) Portal video device due next month.)

The new integrations provide two functions. First, a Workplace app for Teams can be pinned to the Teams side navigation bar or added as a tab to provide access to the Workplace newsfeed within the app. Workplace content can be marked as “important” by Teams admins to draw users’ attention to certain information. Individual users will also be able to pull content from a Workplace group into a Teams channel to highlight to colleagues, as well as react to Workplace posts directly from Teams.

The video integration, due in early 2022, will let users view a Teams video call from Workplace and comment in real-time. Presenters in Teams will be able to monitor view engagement and reactions in both apps simultaneously.

Although the two companies compete in a variety of ways (Microsoft’s Viva Connections also provides social network capabilities, for instance, and both recently unveiled competing visions for immersive collaboration) Wednesday’s move is an acknowledgement that many customers now rely on a range of tools to support employee collaboration.

The integration with Teams “will make it easier for people who use both tools for work to keep up to date with information and create even more opportunities for company-wide engagement,” said Ujjwal Singh, head of product at Workplace.

Meta’sWorkplace app for Teams can be pinned to the Teams side navigation bar or added as a tab for quick access to the Workplace newsfeed.

Singh, who said earlier this year that a Teams integration was in progress, pointed to joint customers that have already been trying out the integrations, Vodafone and Flight Center.

Author : Matthew Finnegan Source : computerworld