Announcing the GitHub integration with Microsoft Teams

Developers use GitHub together with a number of other platforms, to communicate with each other on issues, pull requests, deployment statuses, and other updates. We want to integrate GitHub with other platforms to make it easier for developers and teams to collaborate around their projects from whatever context they work in. We’ve had a GitHub + Slack integration for years, and today we are excited to announce that we’re expanding our portfolio, with a new GitHub + Microsoft Teams integration, now available in public beta.

To get access to this new integration, head over to the Microsoft Teams app store and install GitHub (Preview), or directly install from here.

Getting started

There’s a lot to be excited about with this integration, including the ability to close/reopen issues and comment on issues/pull requests right in Teams. But, first things first, you’ll want to link your GitHub and Teams accounts. To link your accounts, authenticate to GitHub using a @github signin command.

Let’s see what else you can do with this integration!

Customizing your experience

Get notifications for only the organizations and repositories you care about. You can subscribe to get notifications for an organization or repository’s activity using the @github subscribe [organization]/[repository] command. To unsubscribe to notifications from a repository, use  @github unsubscribe [organization]/[repository]

Viewing current details

Your team can see all the essentials details on a GitHub activity posted in a Microsoft Teams channel. The notification card you see for any pull request or issue always reflects the current state from GitHub along with other metadata like checks, descriptions, labels, assignees, and reviewers.

Turning conversations into actions

Any new event that happens on a pull request or issue (like comment/review/close/merge etc.) is added as a reply to the parent card. This helps in retaining the context and promotes collaboration. And you can turn discussions into actions on GitHub, directly from Teams. You can perform actions like:

• Open a new issue
• Close and reopen existing issues
• Comment on issues and pull requests

Unfurling your links

When you share links to GitHub activities in the channel, more details are automatically extracted and shown as a preview in your Teams channel. Check it out:

Staying in touch

We’re looking forward to hearing your feedback on the new integration. Please share any feedback you might have here. For more information, visit teams.github.com and/or our product documentation page today.

Happy collaborating!

Written by

Ashok Kirla

@ashokirla