Microsoft Teams is now available, here's what its bots can do

The Microsoft Teams app became generally available today for iOS and Android smartphones, as well as for Windows and Mac desktop apps.

Competing against enterprise chat apps like Hipchat, Slack, and the new Hangouts Chat, Teams is now available in 181 countries and 19 languages.

More than 150 integrations with software and service are planned for Microsoft Teams, but at launch only about two dozen bots are available in the Teams bot gallery.

Users of Microsoft Teams bots may recognize some bots already featured in the Slack App Directory. Among them are Growbot, which gives coworkers the chance to exchange kudos and mini bonuses, and Statsbot, which delivers scheduled reports and shares data from sources like Google Analytics and Salesforce. There's also Polly for polling coworkers, and Leo, which trains managers to be better at giving feedback and helps them track their own productivity.

T-Bot is the Microsoft Team’s guide. Note that when you're speaking to the bot on desktop, in addition to being able to chat with the bot and ask questions, you'll find a FAQ section and video tutorials.

Microsoft Teams bots can chat 1:1 or with groups. To see the complete list of bots available, visit the Chat tab and click the search box to see Discover bots. You can also call a bot into a conversation with the use of the @ symbol and the name of the bot. Bots tabs can also be summoned in the Teams area of the app.

Custom bots are available.

As the T-Bot release notes explains: "Now, you can quickly and easily integrate an external service with one of your teams by adding a custom bot! Established and aspiring developers can sideload a bot or tab or even create a custom bot using a call back URL. Just head to the new Bots tab and click the links at the bottom right to get started."

Microsoft launched Microsoft Teams last November, but it was initially only available for Office 365 and Enterprise software.

Launched a year ago, Microsoft Bot Framework is able to make bots for platforms like Facebook Messenger, Kik, Slack, Twilio, and Skype.