Connect Microsoft Teams to Dazza

Dazza can answer in Microsoft Teams: as an internal help desk for your staff, or for customers you work with in shared channels. It uses your own Azure Bot, so it appears in Teams under your name and icon.

Microsoft Teams is on Growth and above.

How it works

One-to-one chats. Anyone can chat with the bot. Each person’s chat is one conversation, and they get your agent’s welcome message when they add it.
Channels. Mention the bot in a channel post and Dazza answers in that post’s thread. Each thread is its own conversation in your inbox.
Group chats. Mention the bot and Dazza answers in the chat.
Your team can take over in the thread. When someone other than the person who asked replies in a channel thread, Dazza steps back, as if they’d pressed Take over. Their reply shows in the inbox, marked replied in Microsoft Teams.
Replies from the inbox go to the same chat or thread.

Replies keep their formatting (bold, links, lists). Photos and PDFs sent in one-to-one chats are kept and read.

What you’ll need

Permission to create an Azure Bot in the Azure portal, in your organisation’s tenant.
Permission to upload a custom app in Teams. If uploads are turned off, your Teams admin can upload it for everyone in the Teams admin centre.
To be a workspace admin in Dazza.

Connect Teams

In Dazza, open Channels and choose Microsoft Teams. Copy the Messaging endpoint it shows.
In the Azure portal, choose Create a resource, search for Azure Bot and choose Create.
- Give it a handle, a subscription and a resource group. The free pricing tier is enough.
- Under Microsoft App ID, choose Single Tenant and Create new Microsoft App ID.
- Choose Review + create, then Create, then Go to resource.
Open Settings → Configuration. Paste Dazza’s address into Messaging endpoint and choose Apply.
On the same page, copy the Microsoft App ID and the App Tenant ID.
Next to the app ID, choose Manage Password. Under Client secrets, choose New client secret, then copy its Value (not the Secret ID). You only see it once.
Open Settings → Channels and add Microsoft Teams. Accept the terms and choose Apply.
In Dazza, paste the app ID, tenant ID and client secret. Change Name in Teams if you like, then press Connect Microsoft Teams.
Press Download the Teams app. You get a zip with Dazza’s manifest and icons, made for your bot.
In Teams, open Apps → Manage your apps → Upload an app → Upload a custom app and choose the zip. Add it for yourself, or to a team.

Dazza checks the app ID and secret with Microsoft before saving them, and the secret is encrypted. The connection shows Waiting for the platform until Teams sends the first message, then Connected.

The Teams app

The zip has three files:

manifest.json: your bot, the name and description people see, your brand colour, and the scopes it works in (personal chats, teams and group chats).
color.png and outline.png: the icons.

It also asks for the ChannelMessage.Read.Group permission. That lets Dazza see replies in the threads it’s answering, so a teammate’s reply can take over. A team owner agrees to it when they add the app to a team. Without it, Dazza only sees messages that mention it.

To update the app (a new name, say), download it again from the Teams connection and upload it over the old one. Each download has a higher version number, as Teams expects.

Security

Every message from Teams carries a token signed by Microsoft’s Bot Connector service. Dazza checks it against Microsoft’s published keys (its issuer, audience, expiry and the service address) and refuses anything else. Replies go through the Bot Connector API with a token for your bot.

If something isn’t working

“Microsoft doesn’t accept that client secret.” Copy the secret’s Value, not its ID, or make a new one.
“Microsoft can’t find that app ID in that tenant.” Check both on the bot’s Configuration page.
Still waiting for the platform. Check the messaging endpoint in Azure matches Dazza’s, that the Teams channel is added to the bot, and send the bot a message in Teams.
Replies stop. If the app is removed from a chat or team, replies there show Not sent with the reason.