Steps to Test Microsoft Teams Integrations

[Pooja Gupta1]

So, you learned about the cool integrations ServiceNow has built with Microsoft Teams, and don’t know how to proceed? Here are a few steps to get you started:

1. Identify your stakeholders and the use cases they want to enable:

First, work with your ServiceNow platform owner to know who (for example, which departments and groups) in your organization is interested in adopting this integration. This will help you identify what use cases are relevant for your organization and which ones you should roll out first.

Below are common use cases to highlight to build stakeholder interest:

1. Enable employees to request help via ServiceNow Virtual Agent directly from Microsoft Teams.
2. Enable employees to receive notifications on the updates made to their requests on Microsoft Teams.
3. Enable managers to complete approval requests directly from Microsoft Teams.
4. Provide a preview of employee portal updates on Microsoft Teams.
5. Enable agents to chat with employees via Microsoft Teams to fulfil their requests, and save that conversation in their ticket records.
6. Allow agents to collaborate on Microsoft Teams (via chat and calls) to resolve incidents.

Work with your ServiceNow account team to schedule a demo of the use cases available out-of-box. As you walk through these features, identify which use cases your stakeholders are most interested in. Consider starting with a small set of out-of-box use cases and scale their usage, before implementing any custom use cases.

2. Identify the plugins you need to implement:

You may need to install more than one plug-in from the ServiceNow store to enable the desired use case.  To effectively test your integration experience, ensure you fully understand which plug-ins you need, so you don’t repeat configuration steps. Refer to Microsoft Teams Integrations Cheat Sheets and FAQs to get started. 

3. Create your test environment:

Like any new capability, it is recommended that you test the ServiceNow and Microsoft Teams integration in a sub-production environment before deploying it on the production environment. Below is what you need to create the test environment:

1. Access to ServiceNow sub-prod instance: Most likely you have a sub-prod ServiceNow instance that your organization uses for testing new developments. You would need to have admin access (if you don’t already have it) to this instance to do the required configurations and test them. 

2. Access to a sub-prod or developer Microsoft Tenant: To integrate ServiceNow with Microsoft teams, you need admin access to the Microsoft Tenant for your organization. As with your ServiceNow Instance, we recommend using your organization’s sub-prod Microsoft Tenant to test the integration. You would need to have admin access to the sub-prod Microsoft tenant (or collaborate with the Microsoft Tenant admin) to do the required configuration steps. 

In case you don’t have a sub-prod Microsoft Tenant for your organization, you can explore the below two options:

1. 1. Use a developer Microsoft Tenant: You can sign-up for Microsoft’s developer program and get a new Microsoft tenant assigned to you. This is like having a ServiceNow developer instance. The good thing about a developer Microsoft Tenant is that it comes with a sample user data pack, which allows you to add 25 demo users to the tenant. This is very helpful in running the required test scenarios.
   2. Use the production Microsoft tenant: Your last choice would be to use the production Microsoft tenant. If that’s what you are opting for, we recommend working with your Microsoft Teams admin (if that’s not you), to create a custom setup policy and assign that policy to a small group of users who will be testing the integration. After the test, you must remove this policy, clean up any configurations made, and do the configuration all over again for connecting with the ServiceNow in-prod instance.

3. Actual test users or demo users to test the experience: Once you have configured the integration, it is critical to test all your use cases end-to-end. If you are using a Microsoft Tenant (prod or sub-prod) associated with your organization, the best approach is to find individuals who are willing to participate and help you test the integration.  Find an individual in each stakeholder group that will be affected, including at least:

• • Two IT agents (these would have ‘ITIL user role’ in ServiceNow) — if you have separate groups for let’s say tier 1 and tier 2 agents, then consider including one agent from each group that you plan to make the integration available for.
  • At least one employee — if you have different groups of employees created, consider including one employee from each group.
  • At least one approver of requests (they would have the ‘approver role’ in ServiceNow) — you would need to work with the manager of the employee selected as a tester.
  • Two HR Agents (they would have the ‘HR case writer role’ in ServiceNow) — you need this only if you plan to extend the integration for HR service delivery.

In case you are using a developer Microsoft Tenant, connect the demo users available to you with the right role (as specified above) with the sub-prod ServiceNow instance using the sys_users table via the user’s email address. For the actual testing, you will have to impersonate these users to validate the test scenarios.

4. Complete the installation:

Follow product documents instructions for the installation process. Refer to roles required in the setup of the Microsoft Teams integration to identify who you need to work with. 

5. Define and run relevant test cases:

You should do end-to-end testing of the use cases that are relevant to you. This is also an opportunity to showcase the capabilities with your stakeholders to get additional feedback and to get them excited about it. Tip: You can use an incognito window to be signed into Teams as a different user than the one signed into your desktop app, so you can simulate a conversation.

Below are a few basic test cases (covering the employee-facing features) you should consider running:

• Virtual Agent on Microsoft Teams test cases: If you already have Virtual Agent available for users, test a couple of the most frequently used topics. Otherwise, if you are setting up Virtual Agent for the first time, as part of the Teams integration, then test the following: 
• • Create and display a personalized Virtual Agent greeting for your users.
  • Test topic discovery in Teams with either keywords or NLU.
  • Test the output rendering of your Virtual Agent topics.
  • Note that Teams outputs HTML as an image. If you have topics with HTML output type, consider switching to another format such as text.
  • Test transferring to a live agent.
  • Once you tested several conversations in Teams, use the Conversational Analytics Dashboard to see Teams usage as a Channel being tracked. This will also help show your stakeholders the adoption of the Teams integration.

• Test actionable notifications: Run the below tests:
• • As an employee, submit an incident/request item/hr case (this can be done in the portal/virtual agent/platform UI). As an agent, comment on that ticket. Make sure you're logged into Teams as the employee. You should receive an actionable comment notification for the submitted request.
  • As an employee, place a request for an item (this can be done in the portal/virtual agent/platform UI). As an agent, generate an approval request. This would fire off an actionable notification for the "approver." If you are impersonating these roles, make sure you log in as the "approver" in teams to see the notification. 

• Employee Dashboard (Employee Center) test cases: First, you should check if the 'Employee Center' portal is loading correctly and if you are seeing the expected widgets. Then run the below tests:
• • Post an announcement in the EESP portal and view it in Microsoft Teams.
  • After submitting a ticket, open Employee Center to view the list of tickets.
  • Create an outage record and view that outage in Your Hub.

• Agent-Employee Chat feature: Using either the platform UI or a workspace, open an active incident record. On a record, log in as a user with the ITIL role, use the “Start Chat” function to start a chat with the individual who opened the incident. After the conversation, go back to the incident and use the “Import Chat” action to import the messages back into the record in ServiceNow. Note that if you are testing this with workspace, you must have it preconfigured along with Agent Chat. And, the agent will need to be signed into Workspace and be part of the queue where chats are being routed.

6. Plan your move to production:

Once you have tested the integration in your test environment, you are ready to move it to production. Below are the steps in doing so:

1. [If you used the production Microsoft Tenant for your test environment]: Clean up the Microsoft tenant from any configurations made and remove the custom setup policy that you may have set up for the testing.
2. Redo the installation steps on the production Microsoft Tenant using the ServiceNow production Instance
3. Re-do the installation steps on your ServiceNow production instance — you can move the business rule and UI options you configured as part of an “update set” from your sub-prod to the prod ServiceNow instance

Consider doing a phased roll-out for the integration, starting with one geography or user group. You can use the custom setup policy and assign that policy to the desired set of users.

Additional tips:

• You will not receive a Teams notification about an updated ticket if you were the one that made the update. (People don't need to be notified when they are the ones who made an update.)
• If you are receiving duplicate notifications, there are likely duplicate provider notifications in different application scopes. You should disable the duplicates before or during testing.

Reach out to your Account team, refer to ServiceNow product docs, or ask a question on the Microsoft Teams Community Forum to get further help.