On Monday afternoon, as news of COVID-19 cases spread globally, we pulled together a team to help customers coordinate their own information sharing and team collaboration in response to evolving conditions in times of crisis.

Today, less than 48 hours later, we’re releasing the first version of that solution for any customer organization to quickly implement.

Get the full instructions for how you can implement your own Crisis Communication app here.

The solution combines capabilities of Power Apps, Power Automate, Teams, and SharePoint. It can be used on the web, mobile or in Teams.

Key features include:

Employees can report their work status (e.g., working from home) and make requests. This helps managers coordinate across their teams and helps central response teams track status across an organization.

Admins can use the app to push news, updates, and content specific to their organization, and can provide emergency contacts specific to different locations.

The app includes the ability to add RSS feeds of up-to-date information from reputable sources such as WHO, CDC, or a local authority.

This solution and its features are inspired by the team at Schlumberger, who weeks ago released their own rapid response app and have been incredibly helpful assisting with our effort to expand generically to all organizations. Hats off to the many people across Microsoft and the champions community who have dug in over the last two days to make this a reality.

As part of this effort, we are also giving all Power Apps users temporary access to a premium feature, Power Apps Push Notifications, so you won’t need any premium licenses to use Power Apps to push information to users. We have reclassified Push Notifications as a standard connector for the duration of the COVID-19 crisis.

Today’s release is just the first step. We’ll work closely with the community to add capabilities and support organizations in their efforts to implement the template. Watch this space for updates and chime in here with suggestions.

UPDATE March 12th: One week in, three important updates worth calling out:

We’ve pushed several minor updates to fix a few issues people pointed out, including a version that is GCC (US Government Cloud) compatible, as well as a significant UX design update: Our friends in Teams have posted some great tips for how to get the app template up and running in Microsoft Teams, which is a great way to easily distribute it to your organization in a place they’re likely already spending a lot of time these days. Our friends in the Power Virtual Agents team have released a companion Virtual Agent template for a Crisis Bot that helps people get to the information they need quickly in a chat interface you can embed on any website, and is fully customizable in low code:

The Crisis Communication template has now been implemented at hundreds of organizations around the world. Thank you 🙏 for the excellent feedback along the way, and please keep it coming!

NOTE:

This app is a sample and may be used with Microsoft Power Apps and Teams for dissemination of reference information only. This app is not intended or made available for use as a medical device, clinical support, diagnostic tool, or other technology intended to be used in the diagnosis, cure, mitigation, treatment, or prevention of disease or other conditions, and no license or right is granted by Microsoft to use this app for such purposes. This app is not designed or intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, treatment, or judgement and should not be used as such. Customer bears the sole risk and responsibility for any use of this app. Microsoft does not warrant that the app or any materials provided in connection therewith will be sufficient for any medical purposes or meet the health or medical requirements of any person.