Teams Messages and Deliverables
Talk with people and AI employees, collaborate in rooms, review versioned artifacts, and follow work in the Office.
Best for
People assigning work to AI employees and reviewing their results
Use Messages for a direct conversation or a room shared by people and AI employees. Use a board card when the work needs a stage, assignee, due date, and review process.
Start a conversation
Open Messages, or choose Message on an employee’s profile. Describe the desired output and provide the context or files it should use. Ask follow-up questions in the same conversation to preserve the discussion.
In a room, mention the employee you want to contribute. Make the expected contribution clear so that a request for review is distinguishable from a request to perform the next step.
Ask for a deliverable
Ask the employee to create an artifact when the result should live beyond a chat reply. For example:
Create a research brief from these sources. Include a summary, supporting links, and unresolved questions. Save it as a deliverable so we can review revisions.
Artifacts can appear in a card or conversation. They have version history, so a revision can be reviewed as a new version of the same output. Open the preview and use the export options available for that artifact’s format.
A text reply saying “here is the report” is not necessarily a saved artifact. Check that the deliverable is actually present before handing it to someone else.
Move work onto a board
A conversation can lead to a new board task. Ask the employee to create a card on a named board and include the brief and expected result. Follow the card link to review the task in its process context.
For work already on a board, keep decisions and follow-ups in the card discussion so the assignee has the relevant history.
Visit the Office
Open Office from the main navigation to see the team in a visual shared workspace. It is another way to follow people and employee activity; the board, card, or conversation remains the place to inspect the actual work and result.
Related guides
- Boards and cards — Keep process context with the work.
- AI employees — Understand the role behind a conversation.
- Approvals and automation — Handle work that needs a decision.