How to Share Text to MS Teams on Android?

Question

I have two Mobile Publisher apps—one for Android and one for iOS—that share the same Experience Cloud site. While implementing a new feature to share text with the MS Teams app, I encountered an issue with the navigator.share() API. This API is the only method available to share content to external apps, but it doesn’t work on Android because it is not supported within the Android WebView.

What are the alternative methods or workarounds to enable native device sharing on Android and share text with the MS Teams app from the Mobile Publisher app? The flow I want to achieve is as follows:

1. Launch the MS Teams app from our Mobile Publisher app (via LWC or Visualforce).
2. Allow the user to select a channel or user within MS Teams.
3. Automatically populate the message generated by our LWC in the selected Teams channel or user chat.

Answer

To solve the issue with navigator.share() not working on Android devices within the WebView, you can explore several alternative methods to enable sharing to MS Teams directly from your Android Mobile Publisher app. Below are the suggested approaches:

1. Using Android’s Native Intent System

Android offers the Intent system, which can be used to share content with external apps, such as MS Teams. You can create a custom native Android integration for your app to share text with MS Teams using an Intent.

To implement this, you would need to create a bridge between your web-based Mobile Publisher app (running in WebView) and the native Android app. This can be achieved by calling a native Android method via JavaScript from your LWC or Visualforce page.

Here’s an example of how you can create an Intent to share a message with MS Teams in Android:

Intent shareIntent = new Intent(Intent.ACTION_SEND);
shareIntent.setType("text/plain");
shareIntent.putExtra(Intent.EXTRA_TEXT, "This is the message to share with MS Teams");
shareIntent.setPackage("com.microsoft.teams"); // Explicitly specify MS Teams package
startActivity(Intent.createChooser(shareIntent, "Share with"));

This method will launch the MS Teams app and allow the user to share the text. By integrating this approach into your Android app via a WebView bridge, you can call this native Android code when needed from your LWC or Visualforce component.

2. Using MS Teams Deep Linking

MS Teams supports deep linking, which enables launching the MS Teams app from external applications, such as your Mobile Publisher app, and passing parameters like a pre-populated message.

You can generate a deep link to MS Teams that includes the message to be shared. When the user selects a channel or user within MS Teams, this deep link will automatically open MS Teams and populate the message.

For example, you can generate a deep link like the following:

https://teams.microsoft.com/l/chat/0/0?users=recipient@example.com&message=Hello%20from%20Mobile%20Publisher!

This URL would launch MS Teams, open the chat window with the specified user (or channel), and pre-populate the message. You can generate these deep links dynamically based on the user’s input and the message content in your app.

3. Using the MS Teams SDK (Advanced Integration)

If you require more advanced functionality, you can use the MS Teams SDK or Microsoft Graph API to directly interact with Teams from your Mobile Publisher app. The SDK allows you to send messages, interact with channels, and perform other operations within MS Teams programmatically.

To integrate the MS Teams SDK, you would need to register your app with Microsoft Azure and authenticate users via the Microsoft Identity platform. Once integrated, you can use the SDK to send text or other content directly to MS Teams channels or user chats.

This approach offers a more complex solution but provides full control over the message-sharing process and enables direct communication with Teams from your app.

4. Using App Links (Android)

Another option is using App Links, which allows you to open specific content or actions in apps (such as MS Teams). App Links are supported on Android and can be used to trigger MS Teams and pre-populate the message content.

For example, you can generate an App Link to MS Teams with a message parameter, and then trigger that link from your app. The Teams app will open and display the pre-populated message.

The best approach depends on your app’s requirements. If you need a simple solution, using Android’s native Intent system or MS Teams deep linking would be effective and relatively easy to implement. For more complex scenarios, such as sending content to specific channels or performing actions within MS Teams, integrating the MS Teams SDK or using Microsoft Graph API would provide more flexibility and control.

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