Next in the Office Template series: Shoutouts

In our first announcement of the Office Template series, we brought you the Out of Office app, which showcased how Microsoft Graph connectors could be used to set up out of office messages quickly and easily. The beauty about using data from Microsoft Graph is that it is easy to use and is readily available. The Out of Office app was a fully functional template for your organization, right out of the box. For PowerApp makers, this meant customization with the ability to leverage the Microsoft Graph scenarios as inspiration for your own apps.

Today, we’re thrilled to unveil the newest addition to the Office Template series: Shoutouts. Like the Out of Office app, it is a brand new template, available to customize, use as is, customize or use as an inspiration to build your own powerapp. By using the PowerApps Office 365 Outlook connector, and Office 365 Users connector, the app allows you to utilize the power of Microsoft APIs to better connect to and appreciate your peers.

Shoutouts: Send a note of thanks to your coworkers

The Shoutouts powerapp allows you to send a note of appreciation to your coworkers  whether it is for a job well done or for saying thanks. This fun app encourages coworkers to share job-related compliments, personalize them with custom pictures, and includes automated email notifications sent to recipients’ managers. By leveraging the power of Microsoft Graph APIs and a single excel table, the Shoutouts experience includes a rich social feed – a first for a PowerApps template!

As with all of our template apps, the Shoutouts app is meant to highlight good design practices to use when making apps. As such, there are some valuable designs in this template that are worth taking a look at:

1. The gallery of square user cards is a very fresh look at searching your organization's Office 365 User profiles. Spice up your dropdown search with some profile pictures, using the Office 365 Users connector.
2. The intro screens to the app shows new users what this app does. It works by checking if you have sent a Shoutout, if you have not – then it directs you through the intro screen flow.  Many apps often have introductory information to show the end user how it works – App makers can leverage this Shoutouts design to include it in their own apps.
3. Shoutouts also showcases the new control that allows you to upload photos from the device you're using. (Check out this documentation Add Picture Control.)  This pattern is a very common use case, and so we're thrilled to get out a template example of this control.

Let us know in the comments below what you think of this newest addition in our Microsoft Graph Office Template series!