MS Teams integration and ability to send messages to users

[Emily Patrick]

A query has come about from our CTO to see if it's possible to use Teams to contact customers in the same way that we currently can with e-mails, without the need to go outside of Hornbill to use our own Teams account and then have to manually update the ticket saying what has been done.  

From the wiki: Microsoft Teams - Hornbill it seems that Hornbill can update Teams Channels, but not use Teams to send messages to users from a request ticket. 

Can this be considered please. 

[samwoo]

+1

Though I suspect the only way to do it (with my limited understanding of how this could work) is to initiate a chat through a button press which will open the conversation in teams via a deep link and insert predefined or manually inputted text by default. Depending on what type of chat is initiated, it could prompt for a Topic Title as well.

Like this:

<a href=”https://teams.microsoft.com/l/chat/0/0?users=<email address>&message=Please add this feature”>Teams Chat with Customer</a>

It is even possible to add multiple users to a chat group with a topic title, so the idea could be extended to chat with the owner and/or customer and/or connections and/or members (with the ability to add/remove users manually via the prompt/popup)

<a href=”https://teams.microsoft.com/l/chat/0/0?users=<email address 1>,<email address 2>&topicName=Hornbill to Teams Chat Group&message=Please add this feature”>Teams Chat with Customer</a>

 

This could go hand-in-hand with Snippets very nicely.

So a definite +1 from me for the Deep Links, if @Emily Patrick's idea is not possible.

[Berto2002]

@Emily Patrick, @samwoo I believe this is what I asked for here. If that works for you, please support. We also want to move away from emails but the HB tool is highly engineered around emails if you don't choose to rely on it's inbuilt notifs prefs.

I mentioned an example of JIRA where you can have the timeline element of a JIRA ticket provided by another messaging platform like Teams; that's what we want; to replace the whole timeline in Requests with our preferred collaboration platform MS Teams.

I have started this by allowing our people to receive their new Request and Resolution notifs by Teams instead of email thus:

Users opt-in to teams notifs:

Workflow updates custom fields on user's profile:

Then at start of the workflow we look at the user's profile and determine if we send them an MS Teams private message or an email:

The disadvantage of this approach is that you have to put that bit in every Workflow...

We only did this as a test to see if it worked (it does) but we would also need to have nodes that update this in Azure Active Directory so the daily user import doesn't over-write our custom fields.

 

[Gerry]

@Emily Patrick

As mentioned above we can already "integrate" with Teams via iBridge, you can use that in an AutoTask and assign that auto task to a custom button, so its possible now to send a message to a teams user/chat.  

But, what I think you are asking for is, can Hornbill have an embedded Client/Interface within the Hornbill environment to interact with users/send them messages via teams instead of email, so like this, instead of having an Email button (the little envelope), we have a teams button, with whatever you would need in the GUI to send a message via teams.  Is that correct? or am I mis-understanding what you are asking for?

 

Gerry


 

[Emily Patrick]

@Gerry

Yes, it would be similar to the way that we currently e-mail from within the ticket, but instead of e-mail, it would be a Teams chat instead, with somehow being able to add this to the timeline, so should someone else pick up the ticket through a hierarchical escalation, they are able to see what has already been communicated/discussed/attempted with the user.  

 

Thinking of it again now, if it can be from a 'central' user (might be something we would need to configure on our side, thinking out loud) that would prevent individuals from being 'targeted' outside of Hornbill for future support would be beneficial, like we have the Hornbill mailbox that sends out the notifs regarding the ticket status etc.  

 

I've not looked further into what @samwoo or @Berto2002 have mentioned yet, or if I have, it was a while ago now, so will need to revisit that suggestion too. 

[Berto2002]

And, as per my previous request of this type, the ability to have all updates to Customers go through teams also; at the moment, the only notification option for updates of visibility Customer is via email.