Microsoft Teams Integration

Connect Microsoft Teams to Sunsama to create tasks from messages and manage focus status.

Connect Microsoft Teams to share your plans and daily highlights in a Teams channel, turn Teams messages into Sunsama tasks, and let your Teams status show when you’re focused.

Installation and account management

Adding the Microsoft Teams integration

Teams doesn’t appear in the right hand panel like other integrations. To connect it:

  1. Go to Settings > Integrations > Microsoft Teams and click Add Microsoft Teams account.
  2. Sign in to Microsoft if asked, and click Accept to grant Sunsama access.

You can then share your plans to the teams and channels you belong to, and remove the account from the same settings page.

To create tasks from Teams messages, the Sunsama app also needs to be available in your Teams workspace. If you don’t see Sunsama in Teams, ask your Teams admin to allow it.

Posting to Microsoft Teams

Share your daily plan, your shutdown reflection, or your weekly planning and review notes in a Teams channel.

How to use

  1. On the last step of daily planning, daily shutdown, weekly planning or weekly review, edit the text to say what you want your team to see. Everything on that screen is posted.
  2. Click Share. The first time, Sunsama asks where to share: click Add destination, choose Post to Teams, pick a team and channel, and click Add.
  3. Click Share again to post. The button changes to Shared.

Click the icons under Share to change or add destinations. Click Customize to choose what’s included by default, and Refresh to rebuild the text after changing it.

Sharing doesn’t finish the ritual. Click the button next to it, such as Get started, to finish.

Posting your daily highlights

You can also post your Daily Highlights to Teams. In the Daily Highlights settings, click Add destination, choose Post to Teams and pick a channel. Your highlights are posted when you click Done for the day.

Skip this step

If you click Skip this step in the future, the share step no longer appears in your rituals. To bring it back, go to Settings > Rituals and turn on Daily journaling.

Creating tasks from Microsoft Teams

Turn a Teams message or post into a Sunsama task so you can plan time to deal with it.

How to use

  1. In Teams, click the … menu next to a message, then select Create a task.
  2. In the Add Task form, adjust the Title and Notes, and set a Channel, Planned Time (minutes) and Start Date, or check Add to Backlog.
  3. Click Add Task.

Viewing the Teams thread in Sunsama

Open a task made from a Teams channel message to see the whole thread inside it: the original message, its replies and reactions, with an Open in Teams link. If your account allows it, you can add a reaction or reply to the thread without leaving Sunsama.

Tasks made from a chat or meeting chat show the message text and a link back to it in Teams.

Update Teams when focused in Sunsama

How it works

When you start a task timer, Sunsama can update your Teams status to show you’re focused and turn on Do Not Disturb so you don’t get pulled off track.

Turn on “Reduce Teams distractions when working”

Go to Settings > Integrations > Microsoft Teams and turn on Reduce Teams distractions when working. This setting is shared with Slack.

If Sunsama says you must re-authorize Teams, remove the account and add it again. Your settings are kept.

Choosing your settings

Once it’s on, choose how it works:

  • Update status: sets your Teams status message while a timer runs, and clears it when you stop the timer.
  • Enable ‘Do not Disturb’: sets your Teams presence to Do Not Disturb while a timer runs, and turns it off when you stop the timer.
  • Show task details in status: controls what your colleagues see.
    • Always: shows the task title, for example Focused: TASK TITLE (via Sunsama).
    • Use channel privacy: shows the title based on the privacy of the task’s channel. Tasks in private channels or contexts, or in a personal context, show Focused (via Sunsama).
    • Never: always shows Focused (via Sunsama).

On mobile

Connect Teams on the web or desktop app. Once it’s connected, you can share your plan to Teams from the share step of daily planning on mobile.