Notification provider not working when linking actions

[Nick Parsons]

Hi all, I'm currently trying to configure actionable notifications in MS Teams using a PDI. My issue is that I have configured a new provider notification System Notification > Providers > Notification. The notification is configured to send a Teams notification when an approval record is inserted/updated. The notification is able to send correctly when I haven't configured any records under the "Link Actions to Content", but as soon as I link my actions (approve + decline actions) to the content I've defined, the notification stops sending. The logs tab when compared to the working notification vs the non-working notification shows the same thing (logs shown below). 

Here is my provider notification:  

Here are the actions under the "Actions" tab:

My actions are script actions, and they look like this (this is for the Approve script action, the Decline looks similar, see code comments):

(function action(
		/*GlideRecord of sys_notification_execution*/ execution, 
		/*GlideRecord of sys_notification_action*/ action, 
		/*GlideRecord of sys_notification*/ notification, 
		/*GlideRecord of record changed to cause notification*/ target) {
	
	target.state = 'approved'; // Rejected action has this as 'rejected' instead
	target.update();
	return 'Approved'; // Rejected action has this as 'Declined' instead

})(execution, action, notification, target);

And here is the Link actions to content record that seems to be stopping the notification from sending (record is defined in the Global scope):

Here is an example of the notification log for a notification that does not get sent:

At the top of the notification provider, I also see these two info messages. I'm not sure if it's relevant to my issue as the notification was still able to be sent when the actions weren't linked:

What I've installed so far:

I've set up the Team to Virtual Agent integration in my PDI by following these docs. I've installed the following plugins:

• Glide Virtual Agent [com.glide.cs.chatbot]
• Conversational Integration with Microsoft Teams [sn_va_teams]
• Conversational Messaging (not sure if this is needed...)

I'm pretty sure that if I install "IT Service Management integration with Microsoft Teams" the actionable notification will work, but is that plugin a requirement for actionable notifications to work? Or can I use actionable notifications without that?

Appreciate your help,

Thanks 

[Nick Parsons · Accepted solution]

I believe the following was my issue (docs for Configuring Virtual Agent notifications), my emphasis:

"The notification experience for end users depends on the type of notification that they're receiving. End users can also manage how their notifications are delivered by subscribing to or unsubscribing from notifications.

• Simple message notifications - These notifications are delivered immediately to the end user, even when the user is chatting with a bot or live agent. The user sees the incoming message but can continue with the current conversation.
• Actionable notifications - These notifications are delivered only when the user is not in an active conversation with a virtual or live agent. When users complete their conversation with a bot or live agent, they can use the Show notification command to view a list of pending notifications, which displays the heading of each notification. Users can select a pending notification to review, then perform the appropriate action for the notification, or skip the action."

I believe that when I was testing the actionable notification, I was technically in a "conversation" with the bot, so I wasn't seeing the notification appear once I was linking actions to it. By typing "Show notification" into the chatbot, I was able to see a list of pending actionable notifications. After running this command, actionable notifications seem to flow through as expected. I also installed the plugin called Collaboration Services [sn_tcm_collab_hook] but I don't think that is what triggered things to start working. I'm also not aware if you can change the above behaviour to have actionable notifications trigger while in an active conversation or not.

Also note that if you need actionable notifications for approvals, then creating that as a notification provider like I've done above has some drawbacks. Installing the plugin Microsoft Integrations – Core [sn_now_teams] (not available within PDIs unfortunately) enables actionable approval notifications that allows the agent to enter approval comments and approve/reject (this notifications seem to appear even when in an active conversation). I don't believe this approval notification is as configurable as provider notifications are, as the actional approval notification enabled via the sn_now_teams plugin isn't a provider notification, but rather seems like a notification that is triggered and built within via a script (MSTeamsApprovalNotificationUtil.buildCardFieldsObj()). 

[Raguram1]

you are right, plugin Microsoft Integrations – Core [sn_now_teams]. This plugin has oob shipped actionable notifications. But even without this plugin installing cs.chatbot plugin will allow you to create actionable notifications via provider notification module.

And you are right, provider notification with actionable does not show when active conversation is going on.