6.3 Extending Teams: Whiteboard, Planner, Power Apps, and Power Automate

Quick Answer: You extend Microsoft Teams by adding collaborative apps. Microsoft Whiteboard is the shared visual canvas in a meeting. Microsoft Planner is the team task board in a channel. Microsoft Power Apps puts a low-code business app on a tab. Power Automate (the Workflows app in Teams) runs approvals and other automated flows. MS-900 asks which of those four to recommend, not how to author a formula or a flow condition.

The April 30, 2025 outline asks you to describe the ways that you can extend Microsoft Teams by using collaborative apps such as Whiteboard, Microsoft Planner, Microsoft Power Apps, and Power Automate. The verb is describe. This is not Exam PL-900. You will not design a Dataverse table, choose an on-premises data gateway, or debug a cloud flow. You will read a scenario and pick the app that extends Teams for that job.

Teams is a hub you can extend

Out of the box, Teams already includes chat, channels, meetings, files, and calling. Most organizations then add apps so people stay in Teams instead of bouncing to a browser for every line-of-business task. Official Teams app documentation describes apps as web-based software as a service that run in an allowed scope after admin consent — users do not install a desktop binary for each one.

At a fundamentals level, know these surfaces:

• Tabs are Teams-aware web pages pinned at the top of a channel, a chat, or a personal app. A Planner plan, a Power App, a SharePoint page, or a website can all be a tab. Tabs are the “keep this tool in the channel” answer.
• Personal apps sit on the left (or bottom, on mobile) app bar for an individual — the Planner app, a custom Power App, Workflows, Viva Connections.
• Meeting apps run during a live meeting. Whiteboard is the exam’s featured meeting-app example.
• Messaging extensions, bots, webhooks, and connectors let people insert app content into a compose box, chat with an assistant, or receive notifications from another service. You should recognize the idea. You do not need developer APIs.

Admins govern which apps are allowed, blocked, or pinned. Users can request an app that is locked. Custom line-of-business apps, including many Power Apps, appear under apps built for the organization. That governance sentence is enough; do not turn the section into a Teams admin-center lab.

The four named apps on the skills outline are the ones you must be able to separate.

Microsoft Whiteboard — visual collaboration in the meeting

Microsoft Whiteboard is a visual collaboration canvas where people, content, and ideas come together. In a Teams meeting, a participant chooses Share and starts Microsoft Whiteboard. Everyone in the meeting can sketch, drop sticky notes, add text and shapes, and see collaborative cursors. Whiteboards created in a work account live in the Microsoft 365 cloud (Whiteboard on OneDrive for Business is the current storage model Microsoft documents for applicable tenants).

Whiteboard is the right recommendation when the meeting is a brainstorm, a process-mapping session, a retrospective, or any working session where a shared slide deck is too static and a chat thread is too linear. It is also the canvas behind annotations on shared content in a meeting — participants draw on top of what is being presented without editing the original file.

Whiteboard is the wrong recommendation when the team needs assigned owners, due dates, and a board that lives after the meeting as the system of record for work. That is Planner. A whiteboard can capture ideas; it does not replace a task service.

Microsoft Planner — team tasks in Teams

The Planner app in Teams is the collaborative task experience. Microsoft’s current admin documentation describes it as bringing together the simplicity of Microsoft To Do, the collaboration of Planner, and (for licensed users) the power of Project for the web in one Teams app. Before March 2024 the app was named Tasks by Planner and To Do; older materials still use that name.

Users open Planner in two ways that matter for MS-900:

• As a personal app on the Teams app bar, where they see My Day, My Tasks (including assigned work and flagged emails), and My Plans.
• As a tab on a standard channel, where the whole channel shares one plan — buckets, assignments, due dates, charts.

Pinning Planner to a standard channel is the classic “extend this team with a task board” move. Official channel-feature comparison still lists Planner on standard channels, not on private or shared channels. If a stem insists on a private channel and a task board, do not invent a Planner tab there; the fundamentals answer is still Planner for team tasks, hosted where Teams supports it.

Planner is lightweight team work management. Microsoft Project (covered with the other project-work tools in Chapter 4) is the heavier project and portfolio answer. On this section, if the need is “shared tasks in the Teams channel,” pick Planner, not Whiteboard sticky notes and not a Power App unless the scenario clearly demands a custom form.

Microsoft Power Apps — low-code apps inside Teams

Microsoft Power Apps is the low-code platform for building business apps — inspection checklists, vacation requests, inventory lookups, simple frontline forms — without a full custom development project. You extend Teams by embedding those apps:

• A canvas app or model-driven app as a channel or chat tab, so the team works the app in the same place they talk.
• A personal app, so an individual opens the app from the Teams app bar the way they open Planner.

Power Apps is the answer when the scenario needs a purpose-built app — data entry, a guided process, a line-of-business screen — surfaced in Teams. It is not the answer for a freeform brainstorm (Whiteboard), a generic task board (Planner), or a fire-and-forget approval email (that is often Power Automate, possibly calling a Power App).

Stay at that conceptual line. You do not need to choose canvas versus model-driven on MS-900, name Dataverse as a required backend, or list connectors. If a practice item asks for Power Fx, it has left this outline.

Power Automate — workflows and approvals

Power Automate creates automated workflows (flows) among Microsoft 365 and other services. In Teams, people often meet it as the Workflows app, Approvals, or a flow that posts an Adaptive Card and waits for a response.

Typical Teams-centered flows you should be able to recognize:

• When a Microsoft Form is submitted, post a message to a channel and start an approval.
• When a file is added to a SharePoint library, notify the team.
• When a manager approves a request in Teams, create a Planner task or update a row the Power App uses.
• Recurring reminders in a channel.

Power Automate is the “when X happens, do Y without a person copying data between apps” answer. Approvals that need a recorded yes/no in Teams are a flag for Automate, not for Whiteboard and not for “just email the boss.”

You can create flows from the Workflows app in Teams or from the Power Automate portal; flows created in Teams live in the organization’s default environment. That is more detail than most MS-900 items require. Remember the pairing: Power Apps = the app people open; Power Automate = the flow that runs around them.

These four stack. A team can brainstorm on Whiteboard, turn outcomes into Planner tasks, capture field data in a Power App tab, and let a flow notify the channel and collect the manager’s approval. The exam still wants the one app that matches the stated requirement.

Realistic exam-style scenarios

Blank canvas. A design review meeting needs everyone, in the room and remote, to sketch a checkout flow on one board. Recommend Whiteboard. Do not recommend Planner; nobody has named owners or due dates yet. Do not recommend Power Apps; they are not filing a form.

Work after the meeting. The same team wants a shared board of follow-ups with owners and Friday due dates, visible in the project channel. Recommend Planner as a channel tab. Sticky notes on last week’s whiteboard are not a task system.

Frontline form. Store managers need a daily safety inspection that writes to a list, and associates should complete it from Teams on a phone. Recommend a Power App surfaced as a Teams tab or personal app. Planner can track that the inspection is due; it is a weak place to capture structured inspection answers. A flow can remind them; the screen they fill in is the app.

Approval. When an inspection fails, the regional manager must approve a close-the-store request in Teams and the store channel should be posted. Recommend Power Automate. That is a workflow with an approval, not a new whiteboard and not Teams Phone.

Tab versus new product. A department already built a canvas app on the web. They want staff to stop opening a separate browser bookmark. Adding the app as a Teams tab is the extensibility move the outline is describing. You do not need a different Microsoft 365 product.

Exam traps

• Whiteboard is not Planner. A canvas captures ideas. A plan assigns work.
• Planner is not Project. Channel-level team tasks are Planner. Portfolio schedules are Project (Chapter 4).
• Power Apps is not Power Automate. People open an app; a flow runs when an event happens. Approvals and “when X then Y” are Automate.
• Do not turn this into PL-900. No one is scoring your connector list, environment strategy, or Power Fx.
• Tabs are how most of these apps show up in a channel. If the stem says “without leaving Teams,” think tab or personal app, not “email them a link to a different portal.”
• Teams Phone and Viva are different bullets. A call queue is not an extension app. A Viva dashboard is employee experience, not Whiteboard or Planner.

Official sources

• Understand Microsoft Teams apps — tabs, personal apps, Microsoft-provided apps including Whiteboard, Planner, Power Apps, and Workflows
• Manage access to Microsoft Whiteboard — Whiteboard as a visual collaboration canvas
• Manage the Planner app in Teams — Planner as an app and as a channel tab
• Use Power Apps in Teams — canvas and model-driven apps as tabs or personal apps
• Create flows in Microsoft Teams — Workflows app powered by Power Automate
• Study guide for Exam MS-900 — extend Teams with Whiteboard, Planner, Power Apps, and Power Automate