Microsoft Teams channel
Your agent inside your organisation’s Teams: in one-to-one chats, in group chats and in channels. It runs as an Azure Bot in your own Microsoft tenant, so your Teams admins stay in control of who can use it.
What you need
Section titled “What you need”- An Azure subscription where you can create an Azure Bot.
- Permission to upload a custom app to Teams, or a Teams admin who can publish it for you.
Configuration in Surogate
Section titled “Configuration in Surogate”Open the agent → Publish → the Channels tab → Microsoft Teams under Add a channel, and follow the four steps:
- Create an Azure Bot in the Azure portal, with Type of App: Single Tenant and Create new Microsoft App ID.
- From the bot’s Configuration page, copy the Microsoft App ID and the App Tenant ID into Surogate.
- Under Manage Password, create a New client secret and paste its Value (not the Secret ID).
- Surogate shows a Messaging endpoint once the App ID is complete. Copy it into the same Configuration page in Azure, save, then open the bot’s Channels and add Microsoft Teams.
Click Connect Microsoft Teams. Surogate asks Microsoft for a token with these credentials, the same check it makes before every reply, so a wrong ID or an expired secret is rejected at once with Microsoft’s reason.
Add it to Teams
Section titled “Add it to Teams”People find the bot through a Teams app. On the Teams screen, Download app package gives you a ready zip (the bot, your agent’s name and the Surogate icons). In Teams, open Apps → Manage your apps → Upload an app. If custom uploads are off in your organisation, a Teams admin can publish the package to everyone from the Teams admin center.
Try it
Section titled “Try it”Try it opens a chat with the bot once the app is installed for you. In a channel or group chat, @mention it: Teams delivers channel and group messages to a bot only when it is mentioned; one-to-one chats always reach it.
How it answers
Section titled “How it answers”Colleagues talk to the agent as a shared team member; each person still has their own conversation and appears under Users. Answers support Markdown (lists, tables, code). Images the agent produces are shown inline; other files are not sent on Teams yet.
Reaching people first
Section titled “Reaching people first”The agent can write first to someone who has installed the app or written to the bot, for Programs steps and team alerts. A Teams channel can also be a team’s shared alert place.
Reconnecting and disconnecting
Section titled “Reconnecting and disconnecting”- Reconnect reopens the walkthrough, for example when the client secret expires (Azure secrets expire after the period you chose).
- Disconnect stops the agent replying in Teams. The credentials stay in place, so you can reconnect anytime.