The HR Service Delivery integration with Microsoft Teams is available as an application on the ServiceNow Store to allow customers to reach employees “where they are”— which is oftentimes within their collaboration tool.
Collaboration tools are where many employees spend significant portions of their day. And with more employees now working from home than ever, chat messages are now the equivalent of stopping by a co-worker’s desk. In October of 2020, Microsoft also announced Microsoft Teams reached 115 million daily active users.
All of this highlights the important role collaboration tools can play in service delivery and the purpose of this integration: ServiceNow provides workflows, and Microsoft Teams is where employees can take quick action against those workflows to even more productively interact with service delivery teams.
What Does the Integration Do?
We’ve continued to invest and enhance the integration that connects ServiceNow’s Virtual Agent with Microsoft Teams, which you may have read about previously. The new integration focuses on two additional elements: employee experience and agent collaboration.
- Embedded Dashboard: Employees can see their tasks, follow up on open cases, and stay up to date on any targeted campaign communications from a Your Hub dashboard tab within Microsoft Teams.
- Agent to Employee Communication: Agents can start a Microsoft Teams Chat with employees from their HR Case form and import the conversation into the HR case for easy record-keeping.
- Chat-to-Call: Agents can invite an employee to a Teams call, complete with screen-share and video as needed, directly from a chat. For service needs that are more complex, this can expedite the resolution time and also provide a sense of human touch. This is made possible with the Notify Connector for Microsoft Teams.
- Actionable Notifications: Employees and managers can respond to case comments and action on approvals without leaving Microsoft Teams.
Installing and Configuring the Integration
Customers with the HR Service Delivery Professional and above packages have access to this integration, and it can be installed from the ServiceNow Store. It is compatible with Paris+.
Installing the Integration
- Install the HR Service Delivery integration with Microsoft Teams plugin, which can be requested from the ServiceNow Store
- Install the update sets included on Store and perform the steps outlined within Product Documentation around verifying Restricted Caller Access (RCA) privileges and importing RCA records
Configuring the Integration
Full set up and configuration instructions are available here, but below are a few tips:
- Review this page to understand all the properties available for controlling key elements of the integration, such as:
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- Which HR Center of Excellence (COE) tables should trigger a Microsoft Teams Chat when an additional comment is added to an HR case, as well as which COE tables agents can start chats from. The above Docs page lists which COE tables are listed by default (and note that COE tables that could contain highly sensitive topics, such as Employee Relations, are not included by default).
- Which users should display under Recommended users when an agent initiates a Microsoft Teams Chat from an HR case or an HR Task (such as Opened For and Subject Person for HR Cases and Assigned To for HR Tasks).
- The Your Hub Microsoft Teams Dashboard is based off the Embedded Employee Service Portal Index – HR portal page [eesp_index_hr] and can be modified using the Page Designer (Service Portal > Service Portal Configuration > Page Designer). See more information on this topic below in the Frequently Asked Question (FAQ) section.
- This page contains information on how to review the notifications for Microsoft Teams. To summarize, you can view all applicable notifications by navigating to System Notification > Provider > Notifications and applying the following filter: Application is ServiceNow for Microsoft Teams. As an example, after reviewing these notifications, organizations may wish to disable your existing email notification and replace it with just this notification in Microsoft Teams.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
How do I know if my organization is entitled to use this integration?
It’s always best to speak with your ServiceNow account team, but in general, this integration is available with the HR Service Delivery Professional and HR Service Delivery Enterprise subscriptions.
What release do I need to be on to use this integration?
This integration is compatible with the Paris release and beyond.
Can any portal widget be added to the Your Hub Microsoft Teams Dashboard?
The Your Hub Microsoft Teams Dashboard is a ServiceNow portal page (named Embedded Employee Service Portal Index – HR portal page [eesp_index_hr). However, it’s also important to note that from a design perspective, the Your Hub experience is not a browser and is not meant to be an exact replica of your Employee Service Center. See the below FAQ for more information on this concept.
How is the Your Hub Dashboard different than an Employee Service Center?
The Your Hub dashboard enables employees to easily track service-related information, such as communications, case status, and assigned to-dos, without having to leave Microsoft Teams. It’s not meant to replace the full Employee Service Center experience, and you’ll notice in many situations, when employees click on an item on Your Hub today, they are directed to ServiceNow to take a more in-depth action.
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