Can U Hear Me Now — Teams Mic Check

An in-meeting Microsoft Teams side panel that kills the "can you hear me?" ritual. Open the panel, run a two-second check, and get a clear verdict — "You're being heard 👍" — with a live input-level meter, before you ever speak up.

▶ Live demo: rod-trent.github.io/mic-check — try the meter right in your browser (no Teams needed).

Tier 1 (this build): confirms your own mic is producing audio, analyzed locally via the Web Audio API. Nothing is recorded or uploaded.

Tier 2 (future): a Graph Communications media bot that joins the meeting and confirms per-participant "you're being heard" from the receiving side. See Roadmap.

What it does

• 🎚 Live level meter — real-time RMS of your mic input.
• ✅ Plain-language verdict — "You're being heard", "Faint — speak up", or "Nothing coming through — check you're not muted".
• 🌗 Theme-aware — matches Teams light / dark / high-contrast.
• 📡 Best-effort Teams signal — if the meeting exposes it, shows Teams' own "you're speaking" confirmation as a second data point.
• 📌 Two surfaces — an in-meeting side panel and a personal tab you can pin in the Teams app bar for a mic check anytime, in or out of a meeting.
• 🔒 Private by design — audio never leaves the panel; no recording, no upload.

Why not just "listen to both sides"?

A standard Teams app runs in a sandboxed iframe and cannot access any participant's audio stream — not even your own Teams mic stream. There is no per-participant "who's speaking" stream exposed to tab/panel apps. So Tier 1 verifies your mic through the browser's getUserMedia, which is what actually answers the real anxiety: is my audio getting out? True receiving-side confirmation requires a media bot (Tier 2).

Project layout

src/                Web app (host these files on HTTPS)
  index.html        The mic-check side panel (tab contentUrl)
  config.html       Teams tab configuration page
  styles.css        Theme-aware styling
  app.js            Mic-check logic (Web Audio + Teams SDK)
appPackage/
  manifest.json     Teams app manifest (has REPLACE_WITH_* tokens)
  color.png         192x192 app icon (placeholder — replace before publishing)
  outline.png       32x32 outline icon (placeholder)
scripts/
  make-icons.py     Regenerates placeholder icons (stdlib only)
  package.ps1       Injects host/app-id and zips appPackage.zip

Run it locally (in a browser)

The panel degrades gracefully outside Teams, so you can test the meter directly:

npm run dev

Then open http://localhost:3000 and click Start mic check. (Teams theme/meeting features are inert here, but the meter and verdict work.)

Build the Teams package

1. Host the src/ files on an HTTPS origin. The included Pages workflow already publishes them to https://rod-trent.github.io/mic-check/ — or use Azure Static Web Apps or a dev tunnel like devtunnel host / ngrok for testing.
2. Generate icons (first time only):

   npm run icons

3. Build the app package, injecting the base URL (a path segment like the Pages subpath is fine):

   pwsh scripts/package.ps1 -BaseUrl "https://rod-trent.github.io/mic-check"

   This writes build/appPackage.zip. The app id is read from .appid.txt (a stable GUID — never change it once the app is published) unless you override it with -AppId "<your-guid>".
4. Sideload: Teams → Apps → Manage your apps → Upload an app → Upload a custom app, pick build/appPackage.zip. Add it to a meeting, then open it from the meeting toolbar.

Cutting a release

The release workflow builds the package and attaches it to a GitHub Release automatically when you push a version tag:

# bump "version" in appPackage/manifest.json first (must match the tag)
git tag v1.2.0 && git push origin v1.2.0

The workflow fails fast if the tag doesn't match the manifest version, so releases and manifests never drift apart. Grab any build from the Releases page.

Testing in a meeting

Mic Check only appears in a meeting context (not 1:1 chats), and you can test it solo — Tier 1 just reads your own mic.

1. Start an instant meeting — Teams → Calendar → Meet now → Start meeting, and join with your mic on. (No need to invite anyone.)
2. Add the app — in the meeting controls, click Apps (or More (⋯) → Apps), search Mic Check, and Add. It opens in the right-hand side panel.
3. Run the check — click Start mic check, Allow the microphone prompt, and talk normally. The meter should move and flip to "You're being heard 👍"; go silent for ~2s and it warns that nothing is coming through.

Alternative (scheduled meeting): Calendar → New meeting → save with just yourself → reopen the event → ＋ near the tabs to add Mic Check ahead of time.

Troubleshooting

• No mic prompt? It's driven by devicePermissions: ["media"]. Check your OS microphone permission for Teams.
• No "Apps" button in the meeting? Adding apps to meetings can be gated by tenant policy (the same admin-settings family that governs custom-app upload) — that's org policy, not the package.
• Want to see the cross-side "they can hear you" signal? That's the Tier 2 media bot (see Roadmap); Tier 1 confirms your audio is getting out, which is the real test here.

Deploying to your organization

Sideloading is per-user and for testing only. To roll Mic Check out to your whole org — optionally auto-installed and pinned so it's always present — see docs/DEPLOYMENT.md. It covers the org app catalog upload, app permission + setup policies, updates, and (briefly) public Teams Store submission.

No Teams admin rights? Org publishing requires a Teams Administrator. Use docs/ADMIN_REQUEST.md — a ready-to-send request (with the safe-by-design summary) to hand to whoever administers Teams for your tenant. Grab the package from the latest release.

Tier 2 — real "they can hear you" (in progress)

A Graph Communications calling bot with application-hosted media that joins the meeting, runs voice-activity detection on each participant's incoming audio, and pushes per-user "the meeting is receiving your audio ✅" status to the panel over SignalR.

The foundation is in the repo and runs locally with a mock — no Azure required:

• bot/ — cross-platform .NET 9 signaling service (SignalR hub, VAD, audio pipeline, mock source). cd bot && dotnet run.
• bot/media-platform/ — the Windows-only media capture (sample).
• src/tier2.js — panel client (off unless a bot URL is set).

See docs/TIER2.md for the architecture, the local demo, and the full Azure setup (AD app + Calls.AccessMedia.All admin consent, bot registration, media VM + certificate).

Privacy

Tier 1 processes microphone audio only in-memory in the panel to compute a level. No audio is written to disk, buffered, or transmitted. Stopping the check releases the mic immediately.