Microsoft Teams

Connect an expert to Microsoft Teams so your staff can ask it questions without leaving Teams. You create an Azure bot, paste its details into Aimy, then paste one address back into Azure. It needs the Professional plan.

Before you start

• An Azure subscription. Azure Bot needs one, even on the free tier.
• Permission to register apps in your Microsoft Entra ID directory.
• Permission to use a custom app in Teams, or an admin who can allow it.

If one of those is missing, sort it out first. The setup can't be left half done.

Step 1: create the Azure bot

1. In the Azure portal, choose Create a resource, search for bot, and pick Azure Bot.
2. Enter a Bot handle. It has to be unique across all of Azure, so add something of your own, such as aimy-yourcompany-support. Nobody in Teams sees it.
3. Choose your Subscription and a Resource group.
4. Set Type of App to Single Tenant. Don't choose User Assigned Managed Identity, because that type has no client secret and Aimy needs one.
5. Leave Creation type on Create new Microsoft App ID, then choose Review + create and Create.

When the deployment finishes, open the bot from the top search bar by typing its handle and picking the result of type Azure Bot.

Step 2: copy the IDs and make a secret

1. On the bot, open Configuration. Copy the Microsoft App ID and the App Tenant ID. Both are long codes made of letters and numbers separated by dashes, and Aimy rejects anything that doesn't have that shape.
2. Beside the App ID, choose Manage. This opens Certificates & secrets for the app.
3. Choose New client secret, give it a description and an expiry date, and choose Add.
4. Copy the Value straight away, not the Secret ID. Azure hides the value for good once you leave the page.

Step 3: connect in Aimy

Open Integrations in the sidebar and choose Microsoft Teams. Pick the expert from the Experts list on the left. A green dot beside an expert means Teams is already connected to it.

Choose Connect. Aimy asks Microsoft to accept the credentials before it saves anything, so a wrong ID or secret shows up here instead of at the first message.

Step 4: paste the Messaging endpoint into Azure

After you connect, a Messaging endpoint row appears with a Copy button. The (i) beside it says where it goes.

1. Copy the endpoint.
2. Back on the Azure bot, open Configuration, paste it into Messaging endpoint, and choose Apply.

Step 5: turn on the Teams channel

1. On the Azure bot, open Channels and choose Microsoft Teams.
2. Pick Microsoft Teams Commercial, accept the terms, and choose Apply.

The channel should show as running. To try the bot, use the Open in Teams link on that page and ask a question your documents can answer.

If your organisation blocks that link, you'll need a Teams app package, which is a manifest and two icons in a zip file. Build one in the Developer Portal for Teams, with the same App ID as the bot, and upload it as a custom app.

How people use it

• In a personal chat with the bot, people just type a question.
• In a channel or group chat, they mention the bot first, for example @YourBot what is our leave policy. The mention is taken out before the question reaches the expert.
• Each Teams conversation thread is one conversation for the expert, so a follow up question in the same thread keeps its context.
• The bot answers messages only. When it is added to a team, or when someone is typing, it says nothing.

Teams conversations are saved to History, where they show as Microsoft Teams.

Checking and changing it later

• Once the expert is connected, a line under the buttons counts the work done, for example 12 message(s) answered · last followed by the time of the most recent one.
• Test credentials asks Microsoft again whether the saved App ID, tenant and secret still work. It appears once the expert is connected.
• To change the details, edit the rows and choose Update. The secret shows as dots. Leave it alone to keep the saved one.
• Disconnect deletes the saved secret. Remove the Messaging endpoint in Azure too.

If something goes wrong

• Microsoft rejects the credentials when you connect. Check the Directory (tenant) ID first. A single tenant bot signs in against your own directory, so an empty or wrong tenant ID fails. Then check you copied the secret Value and not the Secret ID.
• The bot never answers. Check that the Messaging endpoint is saved in Azure and that the Teams channel is running.
• It worked, then stopped. Most often the client secret has expired. Make a new one and use Update.
• You can't upload a custom app. Your Teams admin has blocked custom apps and needs to allow them.