MS Teams blogs articles

Unifying AI Governance and Trust for the Enterprise

Barkha Bathija — Fri, 21 Nov 2025 18:44:35 GMT

As enterprises scale AI, one truth stands out — you can’t accelerate what you can’t govern. AI is built and deployed across platforms and vendors, and enterprises have a challenge of getting visibility and oversight of the AI operations. That’s why ServiceNow is collaborating with Microsoft to bring identity, security, and AI orchestration under a consistent governance model.

The collaboration between ServiceNow and Microsoft delivers a unified approach across the below dimensions.

Unified AI Agent Identity and Access with Microsoft Entra Agent ID

At the core of enterprise AI governance is verified agent identity. ServiceNow is building on Microsoft Entra Agent ID to help organizations securely onboard, manage, protect, and govern AI agents at scale, delivering seamless authentication, lifecycle management, and policy enforcement for agents across diverse environments. This unlocks new value for customers and supports secure, compliant adoption of AI in the enterprise.

“AI agents are rapidly transforming how organizations operate, collaborate, and innovate. With Microsoft Entra Agent ID, we’re enabling both Microsoft platforms and other agentic platforms to manage, protect and govern agents, giving every agent a first-class identity, robust identity governance, and enterprise-grade protection. We’re privileged to collaborate with ServiceNow, which is pioneering new use cases and helping to shape the future of identity-driven AI,” said Alex Simons, Corporate Vice President, Microsoft Entra.

Enable cross platforms interoperability with MCP

Through emerging protocols such as the Model Context Protocol (MCP), ServiceNow will connect to Microsoft Graph, Microsoft Entra Agent ID, Microsoft Copilot Studio, and Microsoft Foundry. This approach is intended to streamline multi-agent collaboration across ServiceNow and Microsoft ecosystems, while leveraging enterprise identity and access control to maintain visibility and governance.

AI Control Tower: Centralized Governance for AI Agents

The AI Control Tower acts as the enterprise’s command center for agent governance - providing visibility of AI assets, tracking where AI agents run, what data they access, and how they perform. ServiceNow AI Control Tower will integrate with Microsoft Entra Agent ID through MCP to discover all Microsoft Foundry and Copilot Studio agents, AI models and tools and add them to a unified AI asset inventory.

Security metrics such as prompt-injection detection, data-access telemetry, and agent-action logs are aggregated from Microsoft platforms into the Control Tower dashboard, providing a consolidated view of AI health and compliance. This empowers security and compliance teams to monitor agent activity, policy adherence, and risk exposure in real time. When combined with Microsoft Entra Agent ID, AI Control Tower enforces both identity trust and operational transparency - ensuring every AI interaction is auditable and aligned with enterprise policy.

“Every AI agent now carries a verifiable Entra ID identity and a monitored footprint in the AI Control Tower—turning governance from a safeguard into the engine of scale. This unified model embeds trust at the core of AI operations, extending security and accountability across MCP connections and agent ecosystems, so enterprises can innovate faster and with confidence.” Nirankush Panchbhai , SVP, ServiceNow AI Platform

The Value to the Enterprise

Unified inventory for all AI agents — automated identity and access control through Microsoft Entra
Consistent governance command center — visibility across Microsoft Foundry, Copilot, and ServiceNow agents
One source of truth — unified metrics for AI risk, compliance, and operational value

For C-suite and architecture audiences, the message is clear: you can scale AI responsibly — by design — not after crisis. ServiceNow alongside Microsoft is enabling enterprises to govern AI by design, not by exception—turning trust into a measurable competitive advantage.

Washingtong DC / February 2024 StoreEnhancements to ServiceNow for Microsoft Teams and Microsoft 365

Jeff Fox — Tue, 26 Mar 2024 15:30:19 GMT

See what's new in the ServiceNow for Microsoft integration with the Washington DC / February 2024 Store release.

August 2023 ServiceNow for Microsoft 365 Store Release - Generally Available!

Jeff Fox — Fri, 25 Jul 2025 15:39:46 GMT

The Biggest ServiceNow for Microsoft Release in a Year!

ServiceNow is excited to announce ServiceNow for Microsoft 365 replaces ServiceNow for Microsoft Teams! Read on for more on the latest efficiency-driving, cost saving enhancements to ServiceNow for Microsoft 365 in August 2023, which is available for customers to install.

See what's new with the integration, including these highlights:

Employee Center is now available in Microsoft Outlook and the M365 app; rebranded to “ServiceNow for Microsoft 365”
Virtual Agent Message Extension: Extends AI Search from the ServiceNow app in Teams, into Teams Chats and Channels
Service Operations Workspace (SOW) Embedded Collaboration: Enabling Agents to manage MS Teams calls without leaving SOW

May 2023 ServiceNow for Microsoft Teams Store Release - Generally Available

Jeff Fox — Wed, 10 May 2023 23:30:00 GMT

ServiceNow is excited to share the latest enhancements to ServiceNow for Microsoft Teams in May 2023, which is available for customers to install.

Utah Release and February 2023 Enhancements to ServiceNow for Microsoft Teams

Jeff Fox — Wed, 08 Mar 2023 16:26:31 GMT

See the latest available enhancements with the ServiceNow for Microsoft Teams integration in February 2023

August 2022 ServiceNow for Microsoft Teams Store Release: New Features & Enhancements

Jeff Fox — Fri, 16 Sep 2022 20:34:11 GMT

Our Teams have been working hard to make the employee and agent experience even better through the ServiceNow for Microsoft Teams August 2022 release. Here’s information on the new features and enhancement just released.

To take advantage of these updates, check out the ServiceNow for Microsoft Teams content in the ServiceNow Store.

The August 2022 release contains three new features:

Request Based Chat with Guest Users: Customers with outsourced IT Service Desk can communicate across MS Teams, straight from Service Operations Workspace

An amazing addition for customers that have outsourced portions of their service desk to a third party. Request based chat enables such customers to add the third party as a guest to their MS Teams Tenant so that conversations may be initiated between the customer and their service provider's tenants. Now these customer can leverage the ServiceNow and MS Teams integration.

View Chat History in Employee Center

Simplified experience for the employee to see comprehensive history, including Teams Chat conversations, within Employee Center, inside MS Teams.

Translations for Campaigns

Translated campaign content delivery.

ServiceNow for Microsoft Teams comes with Employee Center fully embedded inside Teams. Review August 2022 enhancements to Employee Center (including Pro) for new features and enhancements.

Again, the new release is available in ServiceNow for Microsoft Teams in the ServiceNow Store. Updated Apps include IT Service Management integration with Microsoft Teams, HR Service Delivery integration with Microsoft Teams, Notify Connector for Microsoft Teams, Meeting Extensions for Microsoft Teams.

For more information, check out the ServiceNow for Microsoft Teams Product Docs, and explore the ServiceNow for Microsoft Teams Community site.

ServiceNow Employee Center in Microsoft 365

Sid Pandey — Fri, 08 Jul 2022 17:33:03 GMT

ServiceNow’s vision is to meet employees where they are when they need service or answers or access to other functionality built on the ServiceNow platform. Over the past several years, we have worked closely with Microsoft to bring rich ServiceNow experiences directly into Microsoft Teams to enhance user productivity and collaboration.

A New Way of Working

Last year, Microsoft shared with us the opportunity to light up a new way of integrating with Microsoft 365 and build on the work we did integrating with Teams, using a new Teams SDK and manifest they released.

Following Microsoft’s announcement of these new developer tools, we are excited to announce that we are extending Employee Center beyond Teams to Outlook and Office apps. Everything an employee needs to engage with their organization will be a click away, no matter which Microsoft 365 productivity tool they are using. This public preview experience will first become available to customers who sign up to participate in our customer innovation lab.

We are thrilled about this public preview opportunity because customers will have a simple and straightforward way to integrate ServiceNow across Microsoft 365 surfaces.

Admins will save time and effort without having to install and manage different integrations across Microsoft’s products.
Employees will be able to access all the benefits of Employee Center right where they are without breaking their flow by trying to remember a URL or launching a browser.

Amit Oberoi, Product Manager for Microsoft Teams at Microsoft says, “We have worked with ServiceNow to extend their Employee Center solution beyond Microsoft Teams to other Microsoft 365 apps like Outlook and Office. The integration reduces the need for end users to switch between different apps, helping make them even more productive.”

Employee Center

If you are not familiar with ServiceNow’s unified employee portal, Employee Center, it provides employees a curated experience and access to all the services and information they need, whenever they need it. ServiceNow launched Employee Center, and support for Teams, with the Rome release in 2021. Being able to access Employee Center without leaving Teams is one of our customer’s favorite components of our Teams integration, and we are excited to extend those capabilities to Outlook and Office . You can learn about implementation best practices, the latest capabilities, and features, and much more in our Employee Center Community.

We are excited that Microsoft has announced these capabilities and that we can share the first iteration of the integration with you.

ServiceNow for Microsoft 365 is now available as an Innovation Lab release.

California Local Government: ServiceNow for Microsoft Teams

Ryan Balcom — Mon, 09 May 2022 21:23:30 GMT

Thank you for joining ServiceNow, and your California Local Government colleagues on May 4th, 2022, to see firsthand how Microsoft Teams in ServiceNow can reduce resolution times and deflect routine questions while driving better experiences for your agents and employees. This webinar showed you ServiceNow for Microsoft Teams and how it transforms the Employee and Agent experiences.

Watch it Again

May 2022 ServiceNow for Microsoft Teams Store Release: New Features & Enhancements

Jeff Fox — Fri, 06 May 2022 19:08:19 GMT

Our Teams have been working hard to make the employee and agent experience even better through the ServiceNow for Microsoft Teams May 2022 release. Here’s information on the new features and enhancement just released.

To take advantage of these updates, check out the ServiceNow for Microsoft Teams content in the ServiceNow Store.

Targeted Campaigns in Microsoft Teams

The ServiceNow integration with Microsoft Teams enhancements continue to simplify work experiences that “meet employees where they are”. Keeping employees engaged requires an omni-channel strategy where communication and information can be made available from anywhere. With the Targeted Campaigns in Microsoft Teams enhancement, employees can receive targeted communications in the Microsoft Teams interface, giving administrators another channel to engage with their workforce. Now, employees can stay engaged while working within channels where they spend significant amounts of time in their workday.

(note: campaigns flow through the ‘activity feed’ and display within Employee Center)

Microsoft Teams Availability Status

The employee experience includes agents and their ability to get things done more efficiently. Along with initiating a Microsoft Teams conversation directly from agent workspace, agents will also be able to see a user’s availability status in Microsoft Teams. Agents can now determine, before initiating a conversation, which individuals are available for a conversation. This feature was also added to employee profiles. When visiting an employee profile in Employee Center, users can see the availability status of an employee in Microsoft Teams and initiate a conversation should they want to connect with that individual. The new availability status feature creates efficiencies in the flow of work and reduces the time employees waste navigating multiple platforms to connect and engage.

"ServiceNow for Microsoft Teams comes with Employee Center fully embedded inside Teams. Review May 2022 enhancements to Employee Center for new features and enhancements."

For more information, check out the ServiceNow for Microsoft Teams Product Docs, and explore the ServiceNow for Microsoft Teams Community site.

February 2022 ServiceNow for Microsoft Teams Store Release: Integration and Usability Enhancements

Jeff Fox — Thu, 03 Feb 2022 00:37:26 GMT

Keep your ServiceNow for Microsoft Teams integration up to date with the latest from the ServiceNow Store!

These new features are now available in the February 2022 ServiceNow Store Release:

Link Unfurling: Improved user experience and productivity when a ServiceNow link is shared wiht the user within MS Teams. Store Link: IT ServiceManagement integration with Microsoft Teams or HR Service Delivery integration with Microsoft Teams.
Localization in MS Teams: Localized versions of the apps are now shipped with each Store release and allow for the localization of user interface elements like the app name and other tabs. Store Links: IT ServiceManagement integration with Microsoft Teams or HR Service Delivery integration with Microsoft Teams, Notify Connector for Microsoft Teams, Meeting Extensions for Microsoft Teams.
Conference Call Dial-In and Lobby Bypass Support: Conference calls now support the addition of phone numbers and join codes as well as admin options for who can bypass the lobby and directly enter the meeting. Store Link: Notify Connector for Microsoft Teams.
Conversational Integration Enhancement: Embedded content preview for KB, service catalog, ticket. Live agent typing indicator. Store Link: Conversational Integration with Microsoft Teams.

Steps to Test Microsoft Teams Integrations

Pooja Gupta1 — Wed, 23 Jun 2021 21:20:24 GMT

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:

Enable employees to request help via ServiceNow Virtual Agent directly from Microsoft Teams.
Enable employees to receive notifications on the updates made to their requests on Microsoft Teams.
Enable managers to complete approval requests directly from Microsoft Teams.
Provide a preview of employee portal updates on Microsoft Teams.
Enable agents to chat with employees via Microsoft Teams to fulfil their requests, and save that conversation in their ticket records.
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. 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:

[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.
Redo the installation steps on the production Microsoft Tenant using the ServiceNow production Instance
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.

Roles required in the setup of the Microsoft Teams integration

Gene Shtilkind — Wed, 23 Jun 2021 19:10:27 GMT

Purpose

The setup of the Microsoft Teams integration often requires collaboration across various groups within an organization. The goal of this document is to clarify the roles and responsibilities of each party involved.

Who is involved?

There are, at minimum, 4 different roles required in enabling the integration between your ServiceNow instance and your Microsoft Teams tenant.

Typically, in a large organization, there will be 3 individuals involved. 1 will be the ServiceNow System Administrator, another will be an Azure AD administrator who is assigned the external_app_install_admin role in ServiceNow, and the third will be a Teams administrator.

In a smaller organization, there may be one administrator on the ServiceNow side (System Administrator) and one administrator on the Microsoft side, who has both an administrator role in Azure AD and the Teams administrator role.

ServiceNow Roles

admin (System Administrator) – "admin" is the System Administrator role within ServiceNow. In this scenario, the System Administrator is involved in multiple parts of the process, including identifying the individuals to help with the integration setup, assigning the external_app_install_admin role, and configuring the Teams integration within the ServiceNow instance.

external_app_install_admin - This is a scoped administration role with very limited privileges. This role enables a user to connect the ServiceNow instance to an external system, in this case, Microsoft Teams.

Azure AD Roles

A user must have one of the following roles in Azure AD and the external_app_install_admin role in ServiceNow, in order to complete the connection and authorization portions of the setup experience.

Note: The actual time required to click through the Connection and Authorization steps is minimal (just a few minutes); however, the individual who is assigned an administrator role in Azure and the external_app_install_admin role may have less experience with ServiceNow than the System Administrator and will have questions about the integration. It will expedite the setup process if the System Administrator carves out time to sit with the external_app_install_admin as they work through the setup, to answer any questions.

Microsoft Teams Roles

Teams administrator – This user will be responsible for uploading the application manifest into the Microsoft Teams tenant and can assign custom app policies. One step in the setup requires creation of a custom app policy. Additionally, custom app policies can be used to restrict which users have access to the ServiceNow for Teams application, enabling testing as well as limited rollouts, targeting a specific region or a specific set of users, before doing a global rollout.

Roles Chart

	ServiceNow	Azure AD	Teams
Admin (System administrator)	X
External_app_install_admin	X
Application Administrator		X
Cloud Application Administrator		X
Global Administrator		X
Privileged Role Administrator		X
Teams Administrator			X

Setup Steps

ServiceNow System Administrator installs the required applications/plugins.
ServiceNow System Administrator identifies the appropriate users with the Microsoft Application administrator role and the Teams administrator role.
The System Administrator assigns the external_app_install_admin role to the Microsoft Application Administrator.
The System Administrator should provide a link to the page where the Azure AD Application Administrator can establish the connection between the instance and tenant, and then, subsequently, authorize the apps. Link: https://www.{instance-name}.service-now.com/nav_to.do?uri=%2Fsn_now_azure_app_installer.do
The Azure AD Administrator will connect the ServiceNow instance to their Teams tenant.
The Azure AD Administrator will review and authorize each of the multi-tenant apps.
Once the Azure AD Application Administrator has completed the connection and authorization steps, the System Administrator will configure and download the manifest.
The System Administrator will share the manifest with the Teams administrator.
The Teams Administrator will upload the manifest to their Teams tenant.
The Teams administrator will block the Now Virtual Agent app so that users do not install it directly and then add the Now Virtual Agent app to the allowed list, so that the bot is able to function in the ServiceNow for Teams app.
The ServiceNow System Administrator will continue with configuration of the ServiceNow for Teams application within the ServiceNow instance.