This article guides you on sending notifications to recipients via the provider on supported channels, with Teams as the channel in this case.
Problem Statement : Notify user when incident is assigned to an agent via Microsoft Teams in ServiceNow Virtual Agent bot
Prerequisites :
Ensure the following requirements are met before proceeding:
- Microsoft Teams integration with ServiceNow is configured, and all necessary permissions are granted to users for receiving notifications in the Microsoft Teams Virtual Agent bot.
- Notifications are enabled for all users in Microsoft Teams. To verify this:
- Navigate to All → Conversational Interfaces → Settings → General → Channels and Integrations → Microsoft Teams Integration.
- Locate the toggle "Enable Notification for all users" and ensure it is turned on.
Steps to create Provider Notification :
- Set the application scope to "Microsoft Integrations - Core". Navigate to All -> ServiceNow for Microsoft 365 -> Notifications -> Provider Notifications. Click "New" to create new provider notification.
- Populate the name of the notification and set the category to Microsoft Integrations.
- Provider notifications can be triggered by an event is fired or record change. Navigate to "When to send tab" to add trigger conditions.
- Navigate to "Who will receive tab" to select notification recipients and save the record.
- To create the notification content, navigate to "Contents" related list and click on "New Provider Content".
- An interceptor will appear, allowing you to choose where to display the notification :
- Virtual Agent Content - Chat -> It is used to send notifications via the ServiceNow Agent bot in Microsoft Teams.
- Virtual Agent Content - Messaging -> It is used to send notification integrated messaging apps like Whatsapp
- Workspace -> Enables navigation to the record in Workspace when clicking the notification (appears under the bell icon in the top-right corner).
- Next Experience -> Allows navigation to the record in the native UI when clicking the notification (appears under the bell icon).
- In the Provider Content, select Virtual Agent Content - Chat and navigate to "Format" tab, where notification can be formatted in the form of Record Card/ Simple/ Image Card.
- Record Card - Content is displayed in a card.
- Simple - Content will be displayed in a simple message format as a chat message
- Image Card - This will be displayed with the image and image text
- Select Type - Record Card, Table - incident, Fields - select fields that are to be visible on the card, Enable link option to allow users to access the incident record in Employee Service Center (ESC).
- To navigate to workspace use Customise header. We have customised the header to navigate to the record in workspace on clicking the link.
- To navigate to workspace use Customise header. We have customised the header to navigate to the record in workspace on clicking the link.
- Navigate to "Message" tab and populate message as it is mandatory field.
- Navigate to "Channels" tab to select the channel via which notification is to be sent(select teams). After populating all the details save the provider content record.
Testing :
- Assign an incident to a user who has full access to Teams and the necessary privileges to receive Teams notifications.
Test Results :
- Confirm that the assigned user receives a Teams notification when the provider notification conditions are met.
- In Microsoft Teams, navigate to ServiceNow Application (created during Teams integration) → Chat. Verify a chat message with record card created with the details we have given in provider notification content.
- Record Card :
- Verify that a notification alert appears under the bell icon in the ServiceNow instance.
- Click the notification and confirm it redirects to the incident record based on the current experience:
- Service Operations Workspace (SOW) → The record should open in the SOW view.
- Native UI → The record should open in the default view.
- Click on the notification in SOW, verify record is opened in sow view.
Click on the notification in native UI, verify record is opened in default view.
Limitations of Provider Notifications :
- Provider notifications are limited to users only. These cannot be used to notify groups.
- Notification will be visible for 7 days once after displaying under the alert icon in instance at top right.
