Communication apps and their data APIs
Messaging and collaboration apps — the chat, channel, meeting and presence endpoints behind team communication.
Workplace communication apps expose three data planes: messages, people and presence. Microsoft Teams documents all three in depth — directory people search and batchGet, presence batchLookup with manual overrides, thread messages and chats — while Google Chat centres on spaces: inbox paging, space members, thread creation and message search.
Zoom Workplace adds the meeting plane: GET /v1/meetings/{meetingNumber} resolves a meeting, the directory serves contacts, and the commerce endpoints (/v1/commerce/subscription, /v1/commerce/upgrade) report plan state. All three authenticate with the workspace account session and scope every result to the signed-in tenant.
Frequently asked questions
Which messaging APIs do these apps expose?
Teams returns thread and chat messages with send support, Google Chat pages the inbox, creates threads and searches messages, and Zoom carries meeting chat alongside its meeting endpoints. Writes such as send and create always require the signed-in session.
Can presence and directory data be read?
Yes — Teams is the richest: people search, batchGet and presence batchLookup return colleagues' details and availability states, with a presence override call for manual status. Google Chat offers presence lookup and directory autocomplete; Zoom resolves directory contacts.
What subscription data is visible?
Zoom exposes plan state directly via /v1/commerce/subscription and upgrade options via /v1/commerce/upgrade. Teams and Google Chat inherit licensing from the workspace account — visible only indirectly through feature availability on the session.
