Prototype

Corporate Chat Roulette

What if…

you could network and make new friends at a full virtual conference, just like you did in the good ol’ times?

Problem

Corona has changed the world and the way we currently work. Home office is the new normal, and conferences, if not canceled, are conducted completely in the digital space. While this works surprisingly well, the socializing aspect falls short. You want to chat in the breaks, meet new people and get fresh ideas. A tool is needed that connects you with other conference members - randomly or based on common interests.

Solution

We chose to implement a Microsoft Teams bots as Teams is the enterprise platform leveraged at our holding company Axel Springer and lots of digital meetings, discussions and even conferences have already been conducted this way. In form of a Teams app the bot is added to your conference team and sends a welcome card to everyone joining in. You can use a card action to start searching for someone who is eager for a chat as well. As soon as someone joins the search, the card is refreshed and both are now invited to start a private chat with each other.

Challenges

The microsoft tool and api world surely is a challenge. New and legacy portals for bots and apps with their apis and tool chains exists side by side, tutorials and documentation point into the void at some point and error messages are muted or not speaking. The graph api, which connects seamlessly all microsoft products is powerful, but complex and obscure.