Before you proceed, try to answer the following questions.

•Do you feel bothered to add the bot into the group before you can use the features of an app in a group chat?

•Are you worried that you may disturb other group members while sending an instruction to the bot in the group?

•Do you have to switch between the chat window and the form when you need to fill in a form according to the chat content?

•If there is a feature which requires no group bots and enables you to open an app and edit contents directly in the chat, will you be impressed?

If yes, follow us to learn more about the "+" menu in the chat.

What is the "+" menu?

You may have noticed a "+" button in the input box of Feishu chats. You can click this button to call up the "+" menu to send images, documents, and contact cards in a chat, or start a Feishu vote.

With the "+" menu, you can also open an app in your chat window and perform actions on it. For example, you can click on the Tower Task app to create a task in the sidebar, then send it to the chat with one click.

As the intersection of instant messaging and app features, the "+" menu has more potential to be tapped. That's why we invite companies to add custom apps in the "+" menu to let your own creativity shine. No one can plan handier and more personalized features of the "+" menu than you.

How to use the "+" menu?

The "+" menu provides app portals in the chat window and allows app operations in chats, saving your effort of switching between windows back and forth, or adding a bot and sending instructions for interactions. So what kind of apps is suitable to be integrated into the "+" menu, and what kind of app can maximize the advantages of the "+" menu?

We have provided several ideas to inspire you.

Find "+" if you want to share something

Sending content in a chat is the most basic and original function of the "+" menu. Of course, you can share more than local files and images in a chat. Cloud files, icons in design libraries and data records in the project management system can all be sent via the "+" menu.

Take the integration of Cloud Drive as an example. When you want to send a file to another user in a chat, you can open the Cloud Drive sidebar in the current chat to quickly filter the files to share.

Take notes while chatting to keep everything on track

Have you ever met such scenarios in your daily work?

•Party A proposes their preliminary ideas of the new product posters, totaling a dozen, and you need to record all of them into the product requirement management tool. Every time you view a chat message, you need to switch to the product requirement management system to note it down. If you forget the second half of the message, you have to go back to the original chat to check it again.

•After your leader announces arrangements of a new project with many time nodes and interested parties in the group, you need to carefully read the arrangements and create tasks in the project management system. After you create the project, you still need to read through the historical chat messages and check the timeline and persons in charge to eliminate errors in the records.

•You need to create tickets for customer feedback to record the submitter, question description, time, priority level, and associated ID, etc. of the feedback. You need to ask the customer about details in Feishu while logging in to the ticket system to input information. Switching between the pages is so dizzy.

•Group members are discussing about restaurants for dinner. As the planner, you need to filter out the top five restaurants from several hundred messages and create a vote. Finally you manage to filter out the five restaurants, but forget one of them soon after you open the vote app.

•......

Don't be afraid. All the apps that have been integrated with the "+" menu can be opened in the sidebar of a chat to be displayed side by side with the chat for your convenience in a scenario like the above.

Take creating a ticket for example. If you have integrated the ticket system to the "+" menu, you can directly create a ticket on the sidebar of the chat and enter the information by referring to the chat messages. If you have any questions, you can ask the member directly in the chat without the need to close the ticket creating sidebar. After the ticket is ready, you can share it to the user with one click to give them prompt feedback.

Query and answer

Apart from filling in content to the app by referring to the chat history, you can also open an app from the "+" menu and query information in the sidebar based on the chat history and then give quick replies.

Take the integration of Company Wiki, Help Center and other knowledge-based apps as an example.

•In a chat, the potential customer wants to learn more about the product features. Then you can open Help Center of the product and search by keywords to find relevant best practices and share them in the chat.

•In a chat, your partner wants to learn more about the product's operation and maintenance information. Then you can go to Wiki, find the configuration management manual, extract key information and share it in the chat.

•If a user has a problem with software usage and asks for help, you can immediately open the troubleshooting list in Wiki in the sidebar, and ask for more details in the chat while searching the list to identify the problem.

Easy moment, easy work

Apart from efficiency enhancement, the "+" menu can also add some fun in your busy work. By developing and integrating your custom apps, you can create leisure gadgets such as Solitaire, random number match, and custom emojis to enjoy a moment of leisure with your team members.

More scenarios are yet to come!

How to integrate

The "+" menu is now available to custom apps (both gadgets and web apps).

The "+" menu in the chat window multiplies the possibilities of apps, and the configuration is easier than you think. If your app already has the pages suitable for Sidebar or on mobile, you can complete the configuration within several steps. For detailed procedure, see Developer Documentation: Message Field Shortcuts (“+”).