If you’re the kind of person that pays attention to buzzwords that are trending in the enterprise software space, you may have started to hear the term “superapp” thrown around a bit more lately. Although the concept of superapps is not exactly new, recent innovations with cloud and low-code application platforms (LCAPs) has led to an explosion in the development of so-called “miniapps”.
In this blog post, we’ll put on our capes and explore the world of superapps. In particular, we’ll look at how Microsoft Teams and the Power Platform team up to provide would-be superheroes with the ideal superapp platform. We can’t make any promises concerning the use of superhero puns along the way but will try to keep it to a tasteful minimum.
What are Superapps?
According to Gartner, a superapp is “…an application that provides end users (customers, partners, or employees) with a set of core features plus access to independently created miniapps. The superapp is built as a platform to deliver a miniapps ecosystem that users can choose from to activate for consistent and personalized app experiences.”
The term “superapp” (or “super app”) was originally coined by Blackberry founder Mike Lazardis who, naturally saw smart phone platforms as super apps that could host a wide variety of miniapps. In fact, if you’re reading this article on your smart phone or tablet, it’s possible that you’re consuming it through a mini app such as the Medium app. Or, if you’re already bored with this article 🥱, you might be tempted to switch over to more exciting miniapps such as Instagram, Wordle, or Uber Eats.
While most users are familiar with these concepts as they relate to their smart phone devices, we have not seen this approach gain much traction in the desktop space — yet. Microsoft and Apple have introduced various “app store”-esque experiences on Windows and Mac OS over the years but the end results have been mixed at best. This is particularly true in the enterprise space where there are many challenges associated with the large-scale rollout of enterprise-grade miniapps.
However, during the pandemic, the meteoric rise of cloud-based team collaboration software packages like Microsoft Teams and Slack changed everything. These platforms are perfectly suited for hosting miniapps and provide the infrastructure and governance IT organizations necessary to deploy miniapps at scale.
In the article referenced earlier, Gartner indicates that the superapps concept is gaining some real traction with forward-thinking organizations that are looking to use these platforms to streamline processes and create more personalized user experiences. Although it’s somewhat early days, Gartner expects that more than 50% of the global population will be daily active users of multiple superapps by 2027.
Microsoft Teams as a Superapp Platform
If you use Microsoft Teams within your organization, you’ve probably seen the superapp concept on display already. For example, in Figure 1 below, you can see an example where a few apps have been added to a Teams channel:
Along the left-hand side of the screen, a few apps have been pinned to the app bar: Viva Learning, Power BI, etc. Additional apps (including custom apps) can be added via the Apps button at the bottom of the app bar.
The highlighted Task List tab is embedding the Microsoft Planner app. For our Bowdark IT team, this is a convenient way to keep up with open tasks.
Figure 1: Working with Miniapps in Microsoft Teams
When you add apps like this to the core features within Microsoft Teams, it’s not surprising that users are basically living in Teams these days. Here, users have a one-stop shop to:
📞 Communicate and share ideas using audio or video chat
🤝 Conduct meetings
📝 Co-author and collaborate on shared project files
📆 Plan and schedule activities
⚠️ Receive important notifications and alerts
Miniapps further enhance this experience by providing direct access to business apps such as SAP or Dynamics 365, other line of business (LoB) apps, productivity apps, embedded analytics with Power BI, and even AI-based virtual agents (or chatbots).
If you have access to the Apps button in the Teams app bar, you can browse through hundreds of miniapps that were developed by Microsoft and its partners (see Figure 2 below). Rest assured that this is just the beginning — more miniapps are being added all the time.
Figure 2: Miniapps Available within Microsoft Teams
Rapid Miniapp Development with Power Apps
Although the Teams SDK supports a wide variety of development environments (e.g., C#, Node.js, React, etc.), it also supports deep integration with the Microsoft Power Platform — especially Power Apps. Figure 3 below shows an example of an embedded Power App within Teams. Here, the only real barrier to entry is employing a responsive design so that the app(s) render well within Teams regardless of form factor (e.g., desktop vs. smart phone or tablet).
Figure 3: Embedding a Power App as a Miniapp in Microsoft Teams
Since Power Platform is tightly integrated with Teams, you don’t have to worry about facilitating single sign-on (SSO). Once the user is logged onto Teams, they don’t have to log on again to Power Apps. This makes it easy for Power Apps developers to simply concentrate on building their (mini)apps and not worry about complex deployment scenarios.
The Power App shown in Figure 3 above enables users to process through a service notification worklist in SAP using our Bowdark Fuse middleware, but it could just as easily be connected to a host of other business systems or data sources. At the time of this writing, there are over 1,500 connectors to choose from within the Power Platform and more connectors are being developed all the time. Plus, developers can easily create their own custom connectors on top of available web services.
Creating New User Experiences
For users, having access to miniapps in Teams is nice, but the experience is so much richer whenever we’re able to deliver work into the hands of the right people at the right time. To put this concept into perspective, let’s think about a scenario where a service coordinator is trying to keep track of service activities out in the field.
Before superapps, this coordinator may have been lugging around a Toughbook connected into the corporate VPN. In order to figure out what’s going on, the coordinator would have to stop what they’re doing, fire up the laptop, and log onto a field service application. Then, they would scan through a worklist to look for active service orders and drill in from there.
Streamlining access to the field service app inside of Teams definitely saves some steps and maybe lets the coordinator ditch their laptop in favor of a tablet or smart phone. However, we can do better. Instead of constantly having to monitor service orders, we can use tools like Power Automate to have the system send the coordinator a notification whenever an order is released (see Figure 4 below). From here, the coordinator can press on the Open Service Order button and jump right into the order to coordinate downstream activities.
Figure 4: Working with Notifications in Microsoft Teams
We can take this concept even further using Adaptive Cards technology. Here, instead of taking the user into a miniapp, we can send them an adaptive card in Teams like the one shown in Figure 5 below. You can think of Adaptive Cards as mini-miniapps in the sense that they provide a sort of one-screen experience where a user can quickly respond to a request in Teams without having to drop everything they’re doing.
Figure 5: Working with Adaptive Cards in Microsoft Teams
The adaptive card shown in Figure 5 is part of an EHS solution we developed here at Bowdark. In this scenario, the user is sent a request to provide a statement that’s being collected as part of a larger investigation process. Here, the user can quickly provide their statement, submit it, and get back to whatever they were doing before.
We can create similar experiences with embedded chatbots that can answer complex questions, communicate with backend business systems, and even pull up miniapps in response to specific types of inquiries. See Figure 6 to see what this experience looks like for users inside of Teams.
Figure 6: Working with Virtual Agents in Microsoft Teams
Closing Thoughts
We hope you have enjoyed our little excursion into the world of superapps. If this is your first time hearing the term “superapp”, we’d love to hear your feedback. We’re firm believers that these types of consolidated user experiences are a key part of the future of enterprise software and will have much more to say on this topic in the months ahead.
