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Microsoft Teams and Digital Signage — Integration Guide

· R52 Digital Signage Alliance · 4 min read

Microsoft Teams notifications and meeting room availability on office digital screens

Why Integrate Microsoft Teams with Digital Signage

Microsoft Teams has become the central communication hub for most organisations. Meeting rooms are booked through it. Announcements go out through it. Project updates live in it. When important information is in Teams, displaying it on office screens brings that information to people who are away from their desk, in a meeting, or walking between spaces.

The Alliance’s Microsoft 365 integration connects your digital signage directly to Teams, SharePoint, Exchange, and the Microsoft Graph API.

What You Can Display

Teams Channel Messages

Pull messages from designated Teams channels to your screens:

  • Company announcements channel: Push all-hands announcements to screens throughout the office automatically
  • IT alerts channel: Service disruption and maintenance messages on screens in relevant areas
  • HR updates channel: Policy changes, benefits, and company news
  • Team-specific channels: A channel for the sales team’s big wins displayed on the sales floor

Setup: In the Alliance dashboard, navigate to Integrations > Microsoft 365 > Teams. Authenticate with an admin account, then select which channels to display on which screens.

Content filtering: You control which channels appear on screens and which messages from those channels are eligible (by message type, author, or keyword). Not every Teams message belongs on a screen.

Meeting Room Availability

Display real-time meeting room availability on screens outside each room:

  • Room name and current booking status (Free / Occupied)
  • Current meeting: organiser, meeting name, end time
  • Next booking in this room
  • “Book a room” prompt with QR code linking to room booking

Integration: Exchange Online room calendar data is pulled automatically. The screen updates when a meeting starts, ends, or is cancelled.

Supported hardware: Any screen running the Alliance app, plus the Alliance Room Panel (a small dedicated display designed to mount outside meeting rooms).

Microsoft 365 Calendar Integration

Pull calendar-based content to screens:

  • Today’s events in a specific conference room
  • Building-wide room occupancy at a glance
  • Visitor welcome messages (when a client meeting is booked, the reception screen shows a welcome message based on the meeting subject)

SharePoint Content

SharePoint is where many organisations publish their intranet content. The Alliance can display:

  • SharePoint News articles on screens (pull the latest news items automatically)
  • SharePoint Pages shared to a screen-specific audience
  • SharePoint Lists (a simple data source for dashboards — use a SharePoint list as the data behind a custom dashboard widget)

OneDrive and File-Based Content

For content teams who build signage assets in PowerPoint or other Microsoft tools:

  • Publish a PowerPoint presentation from OneDrive directly to a screen playlist
  • Automatic updates: when the PowerPoint changes in OneDrive, the screen updates within minutes
  • Useful for teams who maintain content in PowerPoint rather than the Alliance editor

Microsoft Power Automate Integration

For custom workflows, the Alliance connects to Microsoft Power Automate (formerly Flow):

Example workflows:

  • When a task in Planner is completed, post a celebration message to a specified screen group
  • When a sales deal is marked Won in Dynamics 365, display a win alert on the sales floor screen
  • When an IT ticket is marked critical in ServiceNow, alert screens in the IT area

The Alliance has a Power Automate connector in the Microsoft marketplace. Search “Alliance Digital Signage” in the Power Automate connector library.

Power BI Dashboards

Display Power BI reports and dashboards on digital screens:

  • Publish a Power BI dashboard to a screen in the operations centre
  • Schedule different dashboard views for different times of day
  • Control which reports different screen groups can display

Setup: In Power BI, publish the dashboard to a “Publish to web” URL or use the Alliance’s Power BI embedded integration for authenticated reports (available on Enterprise plans).

Azure Active Directory for User Management

For enterprise deployments, integrate Alliance user management with Azure AD:

  • Provision Alliance user accounts automatically from Azure AD
  • Remove Alliance access when an employee leaves (automatically via Azure AD deprovisioning)
  • Role-based access control via Azure AD security groups
  • Single sign-on (SSO) to the Alliance dashboard using Microsoft credentials

Setup: In the Alliance dashboard, navigate to Settings > Identity > Azure AD SSO. Follow the setup guide to register the Alliance as an enterprise application in your Azure portal.

Technical Requirements

  • Microsoft 365 Business or Enterprise subscription
  • Global Administrator or delegated admin permissions for initial setup
  • Microsoft Teams API access (requires Teams licence for each user whose data is displayed)
  • Azure AD P1 or P2 for SSO features (SSO requires Azure AD Premium)

Data residency: The Alliance stores authorisation tokens in your account’s region. No Teams message content is stored; it is fetched in real time from the Microsoft Graph API and displayed transiently on screen.

Privacy Considerations

Before pulling Microsoft Teams messages to screens, consider:

  • Do message authors know their messages may appear on screens?
  • Is there an appropriate policy in place for screen-displayed internal communications?
  • Are you complying with employee monitoring regulations (Working Time Directive, employment contracts)?

Recommended approach: use dedicated “broadcast” channels whose purpose is explicitly digital screen display, so authors know their content is intended for screens.

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