Pros and Cons of Teams Cloud app in JSM

[Mason Bly]

Hi Everyone.
I'm looking for feedback from anyone that has used the Teams Cloud app in Jira Service Management.
On the surface it sounds great but I can see some potential issues like people asking questions in Teams but not in JSM and then the responder replies in JSM via the Teams Cloud app leaving the thread incomplete where there is only an answer and not a question in the JSM ticket. (I hope that makes sense). I can also see potential for another channel being overloaded with notifications.
I haven't used it myself and these are me playing Devil's Advocate here so please let me know if I'm missing anything or if you have experienced otherwise.
Looks like it could be a great tool but only with the right configuration and user training Might potentially bring more problems than benefits. 
What do you all think?

[Susan Waldrip · Accepted solution]

Hi @Mason Bly , Welcome to the Community!

As I understand webhooks, which is what you'd need to use to connect JSM to Teams, anyone with access to the JSM (customer, agent, etc.) and that Teams channel should be able to use either Teams or the JSM or a combo of both in order to communicate about requests. JSM will capture the Teams messages for the issue, and Teams will get comments from JSM.

You might check out this article for setting up webhooks. Hope this helps!

[Mason Bly]

Hi @Susan Waldrip 
Thank you for the welcome and thank you for the reply.

So does that mean that what ever is typed in the Teams chat will appear in the JSM ticket? As I understood it, an agent would need to open the JSM link by pressing the comment button in the pop-up/ticket window in the chat. Does that make sense? You know what I mean? Like you can type in the text portion of the Teams chat and you can type in the Jira Cloud app pop-up window in Teams. Do both areas show up in the ticket? 

Have you used the Jira Cloud App in Teams?

Thanks again. You assistance is much appreciated.

[Susan Waldrip]

Hi @Mason Bly ,

I've been researching this a lot but we have not implemented it yet because we are not MS Teams admins and need to coordinate with our org IT department (you have to involve Jira Admin, Project Admin, and MS Teams Admin for all the permissions). However, two short videos that helped me understand how this works are on youtube:  Jira Service Management-Setting up ChatOps for MS Teams (4:25 minutes) and Jira Service Management & Microsoft Teams (7:30 minutes). The second one includes a discussion of Atlassian Access (which is now Atlassian Guard) and a free app developed by Atlassian called Jira Cloud for Microsoft Teams. That sounds like a lot, but it appears you have some different setup options depending on your environment.

I hope this helps, and if it's not enough to answer your questions then please post again to get input from someone who's already implemented it. Good luck!

[Mason Bly]

Hi @Susan Waldrip 
Thank you again for your reply. The videos you sent were very helpful and answered my questions. I see this will need some set up as you stated and some agent/user education as well. Not as intuitive and out of the box as I had hoped for.

Your feedback and answers has helped me to my decision.

[Susan Waldrip]

Hi @Mason Bly , that's great! And yes, I wish it were a little more straightforward to set up but at least there's help available. Who knows, when I can finally set up our MS Teams webhook, I may need to ask YOU for help! 😊

If there's an Accept Answer button on this screen, would you please click it so others know it actually helps answer this question, thank you and good luck!