FAQs for Microsoft Teams Integration Plug-ins

1. What is the “ServiceNow for Microsoft Teams” integration? What are the capabilities associated with it?

“ServiceNow for Microsoft Teams” is an umbrella term used to describe a set of capabilities that ServiceNow and Microsoft Teams customers can use to improve their employee and agent experience and productivity.

From an Employee perspective, capabilities included are:

• ServiceNow Virtual Agent on Microsoft Teams — Employees can access the ServiceNow virtual agent directly from Microsoft Teams. They can raise support requests, self-service with knowledge articles, or request to speak with a live agent without leaving Microsoft Teams.
• Actionable Notifications — Employees can respond to the comments on tickets, approval requests, and changes with actionable notifications within Microsoft Teams
• Informational Notifications — Employees can receive status updates, e.g. approval updates, directly in Microsoft Teams.
• Employee Center portal on Microsoft Teams — Employees can access the complete Employee Center portal directly within Microsoft Teams. They can see pending tasks, check the status of open tickets and receive company communications via the embedded portal.
• Universal Request on Microsoft Teams — Employees can create, track, update or even close Universal Request directly from Microsoft Teams. Empowers Agents to initiate MS Teams chat with requestor and import the same in Universal Request.

From an Agent Perspective , capabilities included are:

• Agent to Employee chat— Provides agents the ability to initiate a Microsoft Teams chat with an employee from a ticket and then to copy the chat transcript back to the ticket as a comment.
• Chat to Call — Provides service agents with the ability to initiate a meeting on an incident, task, or universal request, directly in Microsoft Teams.
• Major Incident Management (MIM) – MIM allows organizations to quickly respond to significantly disruptive events affecting the business which require cross-team collaboration and communication to broader organization.
• Meeting Extensions for Major Incident Management – Embeds portions of the Major Incident Management Workbench directly into a Microsoft Teams conference call to provide shared understanding of the Incident and upcoming communication tasks.

2. In order to set up the ServiceNow for Microsoft Teams Integration, what plug-ins are available and which capabilities are enabled through them?

Below are plug-ins available for integrating ServiceNow for Microsoft Teams:

Plug-in	Capability	ITSM std.	ITSM Pro	HRSD Pro	Release Compatibility
IT Service Management integration with Microsoft Teams Store Product Docs	Virtual Agent (VA)	X (VA Lite)	X	-	San Diego
Informational Notifications	X	X	-	San Diego
Actionable Notifications		X	-	San Diego
Employee Center	X	X	-	San Diego
Agent-Employee Chat	X	X	-	San Diego
HR Service Delivery integration with Microsoft Teams Store Product Docs	Virtual Agent (VA)			X	San Diego
Informational Notifications	-	-	X	San Diego
Actionable Notifications	-	-	X	San Diego
Employee Center	-	-	X	San Diego
Agent-Employee Chat	-	-	X	San Diego
Notify Connector for Microsoft Teams Store Product Docs	Major incident Management	X	X	-	San Diego
Chat to call	X	X	X	San Diego
Universal Request integration with Microsoft Teams Store Product Docs	Universal requests via Virtual Agent on Employee Center	-	X	X	San Diego
Meeting Extensions for Microsoft Teams Store Product Docs	Integrate MIM Workbench with Microsoft Teams	X	X	-	San Diego
Conversational Integration with Microsoft Teams Store Product Docs	All Virtual Agent features (as applicable)	X (VA Litxe)	X	X	San Diego

3. What do I need to download to use the Microsoft Teams Integration functionality ?

| | Objective | Requirements | Capabilities included |
| ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| | Use ServiceNow Virtual Agent with Microsoft Teams | · IT Service Management Pro, or · HR Service Delivery Pro for full Virtual Agent, or · IT Service Management Standard To implement ServiceNow Virtual Agent with Microsoft Teams, see Conversational Integration with Microsoft Teams. | · Enable ServiceNow Virtual Agent on Microsoft Teams. · Supports Virtual Agent features such as Virtual Agent designer controls for creating conversations, notifications, AI Search results. |
| Enhance Employee Experience by integrating ServiceNow with Microsoft Teams | · IT Service Management Pro, or · IT Service Management Standard To implement, IT Service Management integration with Microsoft Teams, see Overview of IT Service Management integration with Microsoft Teams. | · Enables employees to view and take action on actionable notifications. · Access to all Virtual Agent capabilities directly via Microsoft Teams. · Embed Employee Center within Microsoft Teams (employees can access the portal by staying within Microsoft Teams). |
| · HR Service Delivery Pro for full Virtual Agent To implement HR Service Delivery integration with Microsoft Teams, see Overview of HR Service Delivery integration with Microsoft Teams. | · Enables employees to view and take action on actionable notifications. · Access to all Virtual Agent capabilities directly via Microsoft Teams · Embed Employee Center within Microsoft Teams (employees can access the portal by staying within Microsoft Teams). | |
| Universal Request To implement Universal Request integration with Microsoft Teams, see Overview of Universal Request integration with Microsoft Teams | Allows employees to create universal requests directly from Microsoft Teams, via ServiceNow Virtual Agent | |
| | Enhance Agent Experience by integrating Major incident Management workbench with Microsoft Teams | · Notify plugin · Major Incident Management · Chat to Call To implement Notify connector for Microsoft Teams, see Notify connector for Microsoft Teams. To implement Meeting Extensibility with Microsoft Teams, see, Meeting Extensibility for Microsoft Teams. | · Provides agents the ability to initiate a Microsoft Teams chat with an employee from a ticket and then import the chat transcript back to the ticket as a comment. · Allows the agents to work and manage the major incidents from the Major Incident Management (MIM) workbench through Microsoft Teams. |
| | Build Custom integrations | For more information see, Microsoft Teams Graph spoke , and Microsoft Teams Commmunications spoke. | Allows to create custom integrations using Microsoft Teams Graph spoke and Microsoft Teams Communications Spoke. |

4. What does the “Service Now for Microsoft Teams” Bundle include?

The bundle includes the following 4 plug-ins:

Download them all to satisfy all agent and employee use cases listed herein. The IT Service Management and HR Service Delivery plug-ins contain dependent plugins to achieve the stated functionality.

5. Why is Virtual Agent required for ITSM/HR Integrations for Microsoft Teams?

Virtual Agent is not required to integrate with Microsoft Teams; however, if customers want to use ITSM and/or HRSD OOTB topics, they will need Virtual Agent plugins installed.

6. Is there a possibility to just integrate with Microsoft Teams as a standalone without Virtual Agent?

Yes. Collaboration between ServiceNow and Teams is possible without integrating Virtual Agent by configuring the Notify Connector. However, Virtual Agent is a prerequisite for the IT Service Management and HR Service Delivery integrations with Microsoft Teams. The Notify Connector for Microsoft Teams does not require Virtual Agent.

7. If the user does not have the ITIL license, can they still get actionable notifications?

Yes. Actionable notifications require ITSM Pro, but they do not require an ITIL license.

8. Are there any specific use cases for CSM?

No. There are no unique use cases that are specific to CSM customers.

9. Where can I find a demonstration of the ServiceNow for Microsoft 365 integration?

Refer to the Live on ServiceNow On Demand sessions for the latest event recordings. Some recent sessions include:

These cover both the integration process and various use cases.

FAQs on Employee Center availability on Microsoft Teams

1. How is Microsoft Teams integrated with Employee Center?

Microsoft Teams is integrated with the employee profile page to show presence as well as to enable employees to initiate a Teams chat with co-workers. Microsoft teams can also be used by agents to communicate with employee requesters, and that chat history is automatically associated with requests/tickets and visible to employees via the ticket pages on Employee Center.

2. Are both Employee Center and Employee Center Pro available on Microsoft Teams?

Yes, customers will see the version they have implemented available on Microsoft Teams, as well as Microsoft Outlook and the M365 App.

3. Do customers need to install the latest ‘ServiceNow for Microsoft 365’ app to access Employee Center from Microsoft Teams, Outlook or M365?

No, just a post-Rome release that supports Employee Center

4. Do we need HRSD license to access Employee Center Pro from Microsoft Teams?

No*.* There are no extra checks for licenses made for the integration. The customer would need to download “IT Service Management for Microsoft Teams” or “HR Service Delivery for Microsoft Teams”, and if they have Employee Center Pro implemented, they will be able to access it via Microsoft Teams.

This means, an ITSM customer with standalone Employee Center Pro license can access Employee Center Pro from Microsoft Teams.

5. Are there any additional licenses required to access Employee Center from Microsoft Teams?

No.

6. What happens when a customer has chosen to not implement Employee Center?

Customers who don’t have Employee Center implemented can point the portal on the ServiceNow custom app on Microsoft Teams to any other Service Portal application (e.g. /sp or a custom portal) in their instance.

7. Can customers integrate Microsoft Teams with a custom portal instead of Employee Center?

Yes. Find the details here to Embed a custom portal dashboard.

8. Is the experience of Employee Center online portal in sync with what is visible in Microsoft Teams?

Yes, customers will not be required to maintain two separate portals.

FAQs on Technical Details on Microsoft Teams

Yes. To connect with a Live Agent on Teams, just type “live agent” or select it from the available topics menu. The legacy Connect Support feature is not supported in Teams.

1. Does NLU work with Microsoft Teams?

Yes.

1. Do we support on-premise customers?

No.

4. Does Teams work with Government GCC tenants?

Yes. A self-configured bot is required to work with GCC tenants. Follow this process.

5. Is it possible for my Microsoft Teams tenant to support multiple ServiceNow instances?

Yes, with the February 2022 release, a single Microsoft Tenant can be connected to multiple ServiceNow instances.

6. Is it possible for my single ServiceNow instance to support multiple Microsoft Teams Tenants?

Yes. With the August 2022 (Tokyo) release, multiple Teams tenants may be connected to a single ServiceNow Instance. This functionality is designed for use with customers who outsource their IT Service Management to a third party. The end customer can connect their tenant to the Service Providers tenant for MS Teams chats.

7. If my organization maps its Microsoft Teams tenant to multiple ServiceNow instances, and we leverage Employee Center on more than one Instance, what will be the experience for my users?

The user's experience will be based on the Employee Center that the user's instance points to.

Each instance has its own configuration that defines its specific Employee Center. One Teams user is only part of one ServiceNow instance, and hence will experience the Employee Center version configured for the specific ServiceNow instance.

8. . What are the Multi-tenant Azure Apps?

A multi-tenant Azure App allows other tenants to access it. For example, ServiceNow meeting extension app resides on tenant A and tenant B can call it. ServiceNow supports both single and multi-tenant Azure apps. To learn more about meeting extension configuration, please go here.

9. What authentication is used for the integration?

JWT token for inbound authentication and OpenID Connect (OIDC) for outbound. See https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/active-directory/develop/v2-protocols-oidc for more information.

10. How do I raise awareness of the Virtual Agent bot in Microsoft Teams with my users?

An admin can install the Virtual Agent app to all users and pin an app in Teams to make it easily accessible. This can be done in the Microsoft Teams admin center in “Teams app > Setup policies”. See Microsoft Teams documentation on Teams app setup policies.

11. What data does the ServiceNow Virtual Agent app on Microsoft Teams access from Teams? What kind of data is stored by ServiceNow/Teams, and for how long?

ServiceNow Teams will access basic user info (name, username, email). In Azure they are mapped to following API permissions (User.Read). We also capture the chat messages in our Interaction table and imported into incident records where configured. The retention rate for chat messages on the Teams side is 90 days.

1. What are some usable shortcuts or commands when in Teams?

In Teams, you can use the following commands for actions such as beginning and ending conversations.

Command	Description
Hi	Begin a new conversation or access option for transferring to a live agent.
agent	Begin a new conversation or access option for transferring to a live agent.
bye	Leave a live chat conversation when no live agent is available (the bot does not respond).
help	Displays a short list of useful commands.
logout	Unlink your ServiceNow account from a messaging integration.
notification or notifications	Subscribe to or unsubscribe from notifications.
restart	End the current conversation and begin a new one.

1. Is it possible to restrict Virtual Agent topics from Microsoft Teams

In the topic condition script, use “vaContext.devicetype === Teams” as a condition to exclude topics from the Microsoft Teams channel.

Example script where the topic will not be displayed if channels are Slack, Teams, and Workplace:

1. Is guest access allowed to access VA topics?

Yes. Topics with role = ‘public’ are shown to guest users. Guest user access is controlled in the Teams admin center, “Org-wide settings” page.

1. Where can I find more details on Virtual Agent?

Check out the Virtual Agent FAQ here. Visit the Virtual Agent/NLU Community forum here for more information about Virtual Agent.

FAQs on Regulated Market Support

1. Can ServiceNow Government Community Cloud (GCC) customers integrate their instances with Microsoft Teams?

Yes! Currently GCC customers can integrate their NOW instances with Teams (within Microsoft GCC and GCC High environments) to utilize Virtual Agent & Employee Center capabilities. The steps to integrate are located here:

2. Can ServiceNow Government Community Cloud (GCC) customers integrate their instances with Microsoft Teams in Microsoft GCC DoD?

At this time, NOW instances cannot be integrated with Teams instances that exist within Microsoft GCC DoD. We are actively partnering with Microsoft on this integration.

3. What ServiceNow products and services integrate from NOW instances in GCC to Microsoft Teams?

At this time, our Virtual Agent and Employee Center integration with Microsoft Teams has been tested. We are in the process of testing additional integrations from our ITSM and HR service delivery product suites.