Microsoft Corp. today rolled out a major new update to its Teams collaboration tool, which competes with the likes of Slack Technologies Inc. and Facebook Inc.’s Workplace.

The update is billed as the “biggest single release of new functionality” since Teams was launched last year, and provides new ways to interact with and share data, a new app store and support for app and slash commands.

Perhaps the most useful new feature is the store, which provides Teams users with easier access to new applications. In the new store, users can search for apps by category, type or just the app name.

Most of the apps in the library are built by Microsoft or its partners, with examples including AzureBot, which allows users to stop and start virtual machines from the Teams app. There’s also an app for Adobe Creative Cloud that allows for sharing of content created on that platform. The store contains BitBucket applications as well, so developers can use Teams to collaborate on software builds.

Moreover, it’s possible to include application content in Teams conversations. For example, users can search the Adobe Creative Cloud application and then send those results to a “chat or channel conversation” within Teams. Users can see a list of applications that can be queried in this way by typing the “@” symbol within Teams’ command box.

Teams is also making use of the slash symbol (“/”) to introduce more short cuts. Just by typing the symbol, users will be able to see a list of commands available – for example, users can change their online status to “away.”

And there’s a new search feature called “Who.” Using the same graph search technology used in Office 365, it lets users search for people within a specific organizations, either by their name or by a topic. A Microsoft spokesperson said the Who app is the final version of the Who bot preview that first appeared in Teams about a year ago.

Microsoft said the new features will be turned on by default, though information technology adminstrators will still have some control over their access. “Apps are enabled by default, but we provide granular controls for IT pros to enable or disable apps,” Microsoft said.

Image: Microsoft