API vs. LTI Integration for Microsoft Teams

by Jordan Clark

Microsoft Teams is one of the fastest growing learning management systems in the United States. Several K-12 schools have adopted Microsoft Teams for Education and are looking for edtech vendors who have solutions that are interoperable with Microsoft's educational services.

Our team sometimes receives questions about how third-party developers can integrate Microsoft Teams. Specifically, we're asked about API and LTI® integration for Microsoft Teams.

LTI Integration for Microsoft Teams

LTI (or, Learning Tools Interoperability®) is a standard from IMS Global that several learning platforms have adopted to provide interoperability. Applications that are LTI-compliant can work with any platform that is also LTI-compliant, as long as it's a supported version of LTI.

However, Microsoft Teams does not support LTI.  The only way to integrate with Microsoft Teams is through the Microsoft Graph API.

API Integration for Microsoft Teams

API integration allows apps to directly communicate with Microsoft Teams through the proprietary Microsoft Graph API. Users can authenticate into an external app using their Microsoft credentials through an OAuth 2.0 workflow. Once the app and Microsoft authenticate the user, then the app can act on behalf of the user. This means the app can perform functions, such as sending back grades to the users gradebook or creating new assignments, in Microsoft Teams programmatically via the Microsoft Teams API. This is all done while the user is on the app and not in Microsoft Teams.

How to Get Started Creating a Microsoft Teams Integration?

Microsoft Teams works a bit differently than other popular learning management systems. It's important to understand what these differences are and how to approach them as a developer. The first step to creating a Microsoft Teams integration is to sign up for the Microsoft 365 Developer Program, where you will be given access to a sandbox environment and the Microsoft Education Graph API. Microsoft also provides guides on getting started with several supported languages and platforms.

Read More on Microsoft Teams

Here are other articles we’ve written on Microsoft Teams to help you on your integration journey:

If you're looking for a partner who can help guide you through developing LMS integrations (like these), then let’s introduce ourselves. We’re Edlink!