Teams Channel

The Teams Channel integration allows you to display updates from a Microsoft Teams channel directly on your screens. This enables communication across departments, projects, and locations, ensuring that important announcements, updates, and messages are visible to everyone.

This feature is especially useful for:

• Project teams sharing milestones or alerts
• Departments posting internal news
• Organizations promoting fast and transparent communication

How it works

When connected, Smartsign retrieves posts from the selected Team and Channel using the Microsoft Graph API. The fetched data is then formatted and displayed on screens using a Teams-based template.

Smartsign can retrieve the following information:

• Subject – The subject of the Teams post
• Message – The message body content
• Image - The image included in the post
• Created Date – When the post was created
• Message Author – Name of the user who posted the message
• Last Updated Time – Timestamp for when the most recent data was fetched

note

To display images, you must copy/paste them directly into your Teams message. If you upload images as attachments (drag-and-drop or using the attachment icon), they are not part of the message data returned by Microsoft and will not appear on screens.

Requirements

To connect to Teams, you must authenticate using your Microsoft 365 account and some of the permissions asked may require administrative approval.
If you don't hold sufficient permissions on your own, you can usually request such approval during the connection process and then return later once approval has been granted.

Screens must also be able to reach https://social.smartsigncloud.net, which is the endpoint is used for retrieving Teams data.

Instructions

To connect to Teams, you must authenticate using your Microsoft 365 account. Some of the permissions asked may require administrative approval. If you don't hold sufficient permissions on your own, you can usually request such approval during the connection process and then return at a later time once approval has been granted.

1. Start with one of our prepared templates for Teams

2. Click the Datasource tab (click on the grey area outside the template if it's not visible)

3. Teams is already selected, just click Connect a Microsoft 365 account

4. Authenticate and approve the requested permissions: If you have administrative access, you can consent to the permissions required immediately. Either for you alone or on behalf of your organization. If consenting on behalf of the organization, other users within the organization will be able to use the app as well without additional authorization needed. (If you do not have enough permissions you will need to ask an administrator to approve the app, either just for you or for anyone in your organization. Depending on your organizations Microsoft 365 configuration you may be able to request approval right away. Once an administrator has approved the app you can repeat the connection process.)
   

5. When the connection is completed the account name will show in the data source configuration
   

6. Select which Team and Channel that you want to use with the integration

7. Save the template

8. The template is now ready for use and can be published to your screens.

Configuration

Setting	Description	Example
Connect a Microsoft 365 account	Connect to Microsoft 365 and authorize access to data
Time for each post	Time in seconds to show each post	10
Number of posts	The maximum number of posts to display	5
Enable emoji	Enable to show emojis in messages	True
Only show messages with an image	Enable to only show messages that have an image included	False

Technical information

Permissions required

API	Permission	Type	Microsoft description	Used for
Microsoft Graph	User.Read	Delegated	Sign in and read user profile	Allows users to sign-in to the app, and allows the app to read the profile of signed-in users. It also allows the app to read basic company information of signed-in users
Microsoft Graph	Team.ReadBasic.All	Delegated	Read the names and descriptions of teams	Allows the application to read the names and description of the teams on behalf of the signed-in user
Microsoft Graph	Channel.ReadBasic	Delegated	Read the names and descriptions of channels	Allows the application to read the names and description of the channels on behalf of the signed-in user
Microsoft Graph	ChannelMessage.Read.All	Delegated	Read user channel messages	Allows the application to read all the channel messages on behalf of the signed-in user

Limitations

• No video support – only text, images, gif and sticker
• Only one image per message is shown
• Replies and reactions are not shown
• Attachments are not supported (attach/drag & drop)
• Data refreshes every 15 minutes