BMS-MS Teams integration

Introduction

The BMS integration with Microsoft Teams provides users with an alternate method for receiving the notifications generated by ticket workflow rules. Instead of a mailbox, the notification is sent to a webhook URL and posted to a Microsoft Teams channel. The workflow rules define the events and conditions as well as the Teams channel the notification is posted to.

Each post contains a variation of the following information:

  • Ticket Number

  • Event (This is either "ticket created on" date or "updated on" date. The date displayed related to the event will be one of these.)

  • Ticket Title

  • Account (In case of a contact, then the format will be contact.account.) In case there is no contact present, then the format is just 'Account.'

  • Description

  • Primary Resource (If there is no primary resource, then the ticket falls back on to the queue.)

  • Priority

  • Status

  • Note Added by

  • Note Date

  • Time Added by

  • Time Log Date

  • Time Spent

  • Expense Added by

  • Expense Date

  • Expense Type

  • Expense Amount

  • Due Date (All dates and time are displayed based on the time zone of the user.)

Below the information fields are two action buttons:

  • View Ticket

  • Add Time Entry

Clicking a button will open the respective ticket or new time entry popup in BMS. If you are not logged in, you will be asked to authenticate.

Configuration

To set up the integration, the following steps are required in BMS and Microsoft Teams.

Do the following on the Teams' side:

Configuring incoming webhooks in Teams

In Microsoft Teams, you can set up the team and channel or channels that will generate the webhooks that establish the connection to BMS and receive the notifications.

To create a webhook for a channel, do the following. (This is according to the New Teams. For steps according to Classic Teams, see Create an Incoming Webhook under this link and go to Classic Teams tab.)

  1. Navigate to Teams and click Workflows on the left toolbar.

  2. Click + New Flow.

  3. Search for Post to a channel when a webhook request is received and click it.

  4. A popup opens. Enter a name for the flow and click Next.

  5. Select the Team and Channel where the notifications should be posted and click Create flow.

  6. The webhook URL is now ready. Copy it and click Done. Make sure not to lose it.

Creating Teams channel connectors in BMS

Once the incoming webhook URLs are set up in Teams, the connectors must be set up in BMS.

  1. Go to Admin > Integrations > Microsoft Teams.

  2. Click New. The Manage Teams Channel page opens.


  3. Name: Enter a channel name.

  4. Description: Enter a brief description for the channel.

  5. Channel Webhook URL: Enter the same webhook URL that you copied earlier. Once you paste the URL, you can also test the connection by clicking Test Connection.

  6. Failure Notification Email: Enter a valid email to be notified in case of failure.


  7. Click Save.

Setting up workflow rules to post notifications to Teams

The final step is to configure ticket workflow rules to post notification emails to a Teams channel instead of, or in addition to, sending an email notification.

  1. Create or edit a ticket workflow rule. For more information, see Getting started with workflows.

    NOTE  In this first iteration, tickets are the only entities that are supported.

  2. Go to General tab > Triggers tab > Notifications tab of the workflow rule form.

  3. In the section called Channels, select the appropriate checkboxes under Microsoft Teams Channel.

  4. Click Save. Every time the workflow rule fires, the notification will be posted to the selected channels.

Failure notification emails

In case a notification fails two times to five times to send itself, a failure notification email is sent to the email provided inside the Teams channel which failed.

In case a notification fails six times to send itself, a disabled notification email is sent to the email provided inside the Teams channel which failed.

Limitations and restrictions

Supported entities

At this time, only tickets are supported.

Number of channels

Each customer can create up to 100 Microsoft Teams connections in BMS.

Message size and rate

On the Microsoft side, the following limits and restrictions apply:

Parameter Limit
Message Size 28 KB
Rate

4 messages/second

60 messages/30 seconds

3,600 messages/hour

86,400 messages/day