Leveraging ChatOps to Enhance Incident Management

ChatOps uses chatbots, chat clients and real-time communication tools to facilitate better communication, software development, incident management and operations. If you use ChatOps, it can still be a challenge to make communication accessible and actionable across your whole toolchain. With Squadcast-Microsoft Teams integration, you take your ChatOps practices to the next level.

Your SRE and engineering teams can now enjoy the faster resolution of incidents without leaving the comfort of operating within Microsoft Teams. You can use bidirectional sync and the incident detail page to track incidents and user actions. Say bye to routine incident processes with a centralized incident dashboard to Acknowledge, Reassign and Resolve incidents within Teams.

Let us take a look at how you can benefit from this integration,

Features of Squadcast and Microsoft Teams Integration

Improved Incident Management and Actionable Messaging

You can Acknowledge, Reassign and Resolve incidents from within Microsoft Teams with a click of a button. Once the status is updated, it will get reflected in Squadcast. You do not need to sign in to Squadcast separately and can handle these incidents within Microsoft Teams. And this will ensure the team will have a centralized point for Incident Management and messaging.

Bidirectional Sync

You can also leverage a bidirectional status notification sync. Whenever an action is performed in Squadcast, a notification is sent to the Microsoft Teams channel. Similarly, if an action is performed in the Teams channel, then the same gets reflected on Squadcast.

Notifications and User Tagging

Incidents in Squadcast have an incident detail page with a notes section. Users can add notes to this section throughout an incident lifecycle. Once a note is added, a notification will be sent to the corresponding Microsoft Teams channel. The notification will also have details about who added the note and when. You can even tag/mention users, so they get direct notifications through email. This ensures that users do not have to log in to Squadcast separately for notes.

Interactive Commands

You can run bot commands or scripts to view the On-Call schedules, team strength, members of escalation policy, etc., for the Teams created via Squadcast. With this information, you can then tag users within Microsoft Teams to direct them to concerning incidents. Thus, you do not have to log in to Squadcast separately.

Service Specific Channels

You can add and configure (multiple) channels in Teams for specific services. This feature ensures that only the dedicated teams get notified of an affected service.

Integrating Squadcast and Microsoft Teams

Pre-requisites:

• Only the Account Owner and Users with the Manage Extensions permission are allowed to enable, disable and manage extensions in Squadcast
• Only Microsoft Teams Admins can add the Squadcast-Microsoft Teams app in their workspace
• The email address associated with the user in Microsoft Teams and the user in Squadcast should be the same, if not, the integration will not work as expected.

Follow the steps below to integrate Squadcast and Microsoft Teams,

Step1: Download the Microsoft Teams app bundle by clicking on this link.

Step2: Open your Microsoft Teams and navigate to the Apps section.

Step3: Click on Upload a customised app, and upload the app bundle downloaded in step1, by clicking on Upload for my organization.

Step4: Once uploaded, you will see the Squadcast-Microsoft Teams app, in-built for your organization.

Step5: Click on the app card to open the app’s configuration modal and then, click on Add.

Step6: Once added, you will receive a message prompting authorization. Click on Authorize button to initiate the authorization flow.

Step7: You will be redirected to the Extensions page in Squadcast, indicating successful integration of Microsoft Teams and Squadcast.

Adding Microsoft Teams Channels

Step1: Navigate to the Squadcast app in Microsoft Teams and click on the drop-down next to the Open button, to open the configuration options. Click on Add to a team.

Step2: Select the team and the channel you want to add and click on Set up a bot.

Step3: Once added, all of the channels will appear in Squadcast’s Microsoft Teams Extension configuration.

Updating Global Microsoft Teams Channel for every Squadcast Services

Step1: Click on the DEFAULT Microsoft TEAM NOTIFICATION CHANNEL drop-down.

Step2: Select the new Microsoft Teams channel that you want to be the default channel for all the Squadcast Services. Finally click on Save.

There you go, the configured channel will receive alert notifications for all the Squadcast incidents. You can then choose to Acknowledge, Resolve and Reassign the incidents from within the channel.

Configuring Microsoft Teams Channel for a Specific Service

You can also associate one Microsoft Teams channel for a specific Squadcast Service to receive notifications for incidents affecting only that Service.

Step1: Enable the checkbox to activate Team/Service Specific Channel.

Step2: Open the Team configuration option.

Step3: Select the Squadcast Team.

Step4: Select the Service(s) from the drop-down.

Step5: Select a channel that has been opened in Teams and you can select a channel to create a Squadcast (Team, service) to Microsoft Teams Channel mapping and click on Save.

In case you use Slack for your chat communication, checkout our blog on Slack Integration

Conclusion

Microsoft Teams is a powerful business Communication platform and integrating Squadcast with it will boost your incident management, collaboration and other Communication processes. We hope this blog helps you in integrating Squadcast with Microsoft Teams and leverage the benefits of the integration. You can try it for yourself with our Freemium Plan, and in case you have any issues, feel free to drop your queries to our Support Team.