Workflow interrupted: Microsoft discontinues Office 365 connectors for Teams

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Microsoft is discontinuing the Office 365 connectors for its MS Teams collaboration platform in the short term and is advising customers who use them for their workflows to switch to its own Power Automate offering and the Workflows app in MS Teams. The company announced this in a blog post and is giving its customers just over ten weeks to convert their processes. Such configurable connectors forward information from external sources as a post to a chat channel in Teams; workgroups in companies in particular make use of this.

Tight deadline set

In a post on the developer blog for Microsoft 365, two employees explain the company's plans: First, they praise the numerous Office 365 connectors for their versatility and popularity with customers - only to then announce that the connection of the connectors to MS Teams will be discontinued as early as August 15, 2024; from this date, customers will no longer be able to put new connectors into operation. And on October 1, 2024, all existing connectors in all cloud environments will cease to work, according to the blog post. Instead, customers should switch to the alternative Power Automate to ensure "smooth operation".

With the connectors, workgroups can add automated chat messages to their exchanges if they use MS Teams for this purpose. Available Office 365 connectors link services in Microsoft's Azure cloud, an RSS feed, a Trello board or a GitHub repository, for example, and self-developed webhooks can be used to establish a connection to a monitoring or ticketing system or a CI/CD pipeline. Desired information thus appears as messages in a chat room and bundles important information for a workflow in one place.

Low-code tool as an alternative

The authors of the blog post recommend Power Automate from the in-house Power Platform as an alternative. The graphically oriented low-code tool can be used to create workflows without any special programming knowledge and thus connect external components with the Workflows app in Teams. According to the blog post, Microsoft recommends Power Automate as a "scalable, flexible and secure" way to use connectors. In addition, a larger selection of connectors is already available for this. A reference to the Secure Future Initiative (which has been running since 2023) also points to possible security concerns with the Office 365 connectors used to date, although the blog post does not go into this in detail.

Considering the extremely tight deadlines and the hard cut with which Microsoft is presenting its customers with a fait accompli, the numerous expressions of displeasure in the discussion forum below the blog post are hardly surprising. Some users note, for example, that a transition period of barely three months (and in some cases during the summer vacations) is far too short. In addition, a switch to Power Automate also requires a corresponding enterprise license - and of course the necessary effort for the developers. Furthermore, the templates for Power Automate linked in the blog post refer to the Power Platform, which cannot be accessed without a valid license.

Warning notice displayed

Other accusations in the comments include that Microsoft has learned nothing from past forced migrations and has once again set the deadlines too short. Some customers also perceive the planned move as a "quick money-making exercise" that will only bring them effort but no benefit. It is also unclear whether Power Automate will even be able to handle certain message formats if a previously used connector or webhook has to be replaced. According to The Register, individual customers have recently reported that a warning has been automatically attached to every Teams message generated via webhook: It states that the Office 365 connectors in Teams are outdated and that it is advisable to switch to the Workflows app.

Microsoft has not yet responded to the iX editorial team's inquiry. We will provide a possible statement at a later date.

(tiw)