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Sneak Peek: Integrating Teams to Service Manager

Adam_DzyackyAdam_Dzyacky Product Owner Contributor Monkey ✭✭✭✭✭
edited July 2020 in General Discussion

If you haven't seen it already, I've posted roadmaps for the rest of the year and we're hard at work on delivering a Teams integration to Service Manager. So I'm excited to share with the community an early look at what we have so far.

I want to be clear that this is something that is in active development and does not represent the final release. As always, we welcome your feedback.

https://youtu.be/blDRDyTbiTA


Comments

  • Gabriel_LencesGabriel_Lences Customer Advanced IT Monkey ✭✭✭

    Excited for the integration! 😊 Side note: I'd like to see the affected user on the adaptive cards 😋

  • Peter_MiklianPeter_Miklian Customer Advanced IT Monkey ✭✭✭

    Looks very cool! Here are my notes which came to my mind while watching the video:

    1. icons and text are too big, too few tickets are show in Teams when looking into etc.
    2. I'd like to see more details when showing tickets queue, like created date, affected user, etc. This could be customizable in some setting sections (and in general: I hope this Teams integration plugin will have some settings page for all options in the portal admin interface)
    3. comment author seems to be some service account. Could this be changed to the actual Teams user? The second comment contains Adam's name in the comment text so I hope it would be possible to pull it and put it into the author's name. Comments with/without leading author's name aren't consistent
    4. when adding comment the second way (write message in Teams chat, then select to add it as comment), I'd like to see more details about current opened ticket to be sure not to add comment to wrong ticket

    Sneak peek videos are great way to acquaint customers with ongoing functions and what's Cireson working on right now. It's worth separate section in the community forum with previews or create a new section for any new/planned functions starting by first thread = preview video/screenshots. Keep going this way!

  • Michelle_UnderwMichelle_Underw Customer IT Monkey ✭

    Will this work in the GCC for Government agencies?

  • Adam_DzyackyAdam_Dzyacky Product Owner Contributor Monkey ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited August 2020

    Just some follow ups for everyone -

    1. icons and text are too big, too few tickets are show in Teams when looking into etc.
      1. In everyone's opinion, what do you think is min and/or max count that should be the default result set. 5? 10? More? I understand icon size could change this answer. Curious either way.
    2. I'd like to see more details when showing tickets queue, like created date, affected user, etc. This could be customizable in some setting sections (and in general: I hope this Teams integration plugin will have some settings page for all options in the portal admin interface)
      1. We will have a central Teams Settings page where the bot's properties are configured. As far as custom data goes, it is something we are looking into.
    3. comment author seems to be some service account. Could this be changed to the actual Teams user? The second comment contains Adam's name in the comment text so I hope it would be possible to pull it and put it into the author's name. Comments with/without leading author's name aren't consistent
      1. Just demo accounts/I was authorized as a different user to the portal. As it functions right now/today - the initial portal authentication you perform with the bot is the account that will be interacting with SCSM. So the "Comment By" user would in fact be the correct one. Keen eyes @Peter_Miklian!
    4. when adding comment the second way (write message in Teams chat, then select to add it as comment), I'd like to see more details about current opened ticket to be sure not to add comment to wrong ticket
      1. Could you define "current opened ticket" here? Interested in others thoughts here as well.
    5. Will this work in the GCC for Government agencies?
      1. Great question as their are some limitations in these clouds. Microsoft's current position is that Application and Application Publishing are not available in DOD or GCC clouds for Teams at this time as described here. I'll update this thread further once I can get more information.
  • Gabriel_LencesGabriel_Lences Customer Advanced IT Monkey ✭✭✭
    edited August 2020

    My main feedback when developing a new feature and implementing is and probably always be : customizability. As long as we can customize the adaptive cards to our needs, that's good.

  • Gabriel_LencesGabriel_Lences Customer Advanced IT Monkey ✭✭✭
    edited August 2020

    Alright so looking into this and the adaptive card designer a bit more - the design should be fully customizable through the .json files you can create on the https://adaptivecards.io/designer/ right? This would only be logical as everyone wants to put their own branding and color / size / place differently in their designs.

    If that's the case and the design is in a sense "out of the way" of the things you need to think about when releasing this, I'd just say have a list of resources - preferably a video like this through which we can "learn" simple edits to the look & feel of the cards.

    If this is out of the way , that really leaves us with one thing - functionality and customizability of the functionality. Let me expand upon that:

    The adaptive cards / toast notifications in Teams are at the end of the day - notifications!

    So what this means that the content (wording and all that stuff) will probably vary from org to org. What about the situations / conditions though under which these are sent? Is this something that will be configurable in the "central Teams Settings page where the bot's properties are configured"?

    What about the actions you'll be able to do in the notifications? I'd like the ability to have a "reply" , "private reply" , "assign to analyst by group" and "view in xyz portal" buttons for starters. Private Reply and Assigned to analyst by group buttons shouldn't be there for the end users logically. Reply and Private Reply wouldn't be present on notifications like "Work item closed". The posibilies are endless, hence why I think the admins need to have the power to fully customize the content & functionality. This in return, would then probably require separate .json and separate config options per notification (and from this you'd probably need to "build the notifications " through some criteria as to when they get send - pretty much like the Templates & Notifiactions in SCSM)

    @Adam_Dzyacky I guess the question I'm asking is - to what extent will we have control under the notifications? Are we limited to what you as Cireson will provide out of the box or will this "central Teams Settings Page" be really this place where we could go around as admins and make this our own "playground"? Could you expand upon that?

    Edit: @Adam_Dzyacky i just remembered you saying something about the notifiactions - their contents and conditions under which they are sent - are getting pulled from SCSM if i recall correctly? What if we have our notifications done all in orchestrator? Are we "screwed" and need to re-build them in SCSM? 😁(we would REALLY like NOT to do this)

  • Adam_DzyackyAdam_Dzyacky Product Owner Contributor Monkey ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited September 2020

    As we're working towards a v1 of Teams integration a lot of our focus is on getting the foundation of this right. We want to be able to set a bar for what administrators and your organization should expect when it comes to where and how to adjust settings for this. As well as what interaction with it is like so you have true value adds with subsequent releases. WITH THAT SAID!

    While we will have a central Teams Administration page where you can configure the Azure AD Application and what not for your Tenant. Once deployed, every user in your organization will gain more functionality on their own respective Settings page (i.e. https://portal.domain.tld/Settings/User/UserProfile). It's here they will be able to control which notifications want enabled in Teams. So they can toggle Work Item Assignment, Comments, Status Change, and more in the future. A goal that we're certainly striving for is to hit common notification scenarios in our first and subsequent releases. In which case we'll be providing those scenarios and won't require any kind of notification "re-write" as you mentioned.

    So to the topic of customization it sounds like there are two distinct areas here:

    1. Custom Cards
    2. Custom Notifications

    Certainly Custom Cards is an area that we'll begin to explore as we move forward with the Teams integration as well as any complimentary needs in the SMP. As far as Custom Actions go, you're right - this is absolutely something with a near amount of infinite possibilities. So I'll say this, I genuinely want to hear from you and everyone else about that topic on this thread. I actively encourage you and others to highlight different kinds of notifications you'd be interested in to see if we can find common ground on them. Even if that common ground leads to infinite possibilities 😁.

  • Jeff_LandersJeff_Landers Customer IT Monkey ✭

    The docs I have show configuring Bot Services using Bot Channel Registration which is deprecated in 8 weeks. Is there documentation describing how to configure Azure Bot Services for this integration?

  • Jeff_LandersJeff_Landers Customer IT Monkey ✭

    bump

  • Adam_DzyackyAdam_Dzyacky Product Owner Contributor Monkey ✭✭✭✭✭

    Hey there @Jeff_Landers - we will be updating this documentation shortly to reflect the new screenshots/process Microsoft has laid out.

  • Jeff_LandersJeff_Landers Customer IT Monkey ✭

    @Adam_Dzyacky Thank you sir. My Azure admin won't proceed without it.

  • Jeff_LandersJeff_Landers Customer IT Monkey ✭

    Is anyone actively using Teams integration? If so, can you tell me what kind of costs you are incurring with this type of integration using Azure Bot Services? Is it under $100/month?

    App Service Pricing | Microsoft Azure

  • Adam_DzyackyAdam_Dzyacky Product Owner Contributor Monkey ✭✭✭✭✭

    Hey @Jeff_Landers - just a heads up that documentation has been updated on this front.

  • Josh_ReedJosh_Reed Customer IT Monkey ✭

    Is there any way to make it so that End Users are able to use the Global Search functionality from Teams? Currently with Global Search enabled and more than just the Knowledge Base enabled (ie IR, SR, etc) the Service Bot just returns the error "Something went wrong. Please try again." on the end user side. If the only enabled GS option is Knowledge Base, it works fine.

    Am I missing something or is this because end users would not have access to work items?

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