Enhance your Teams experience using T-Bot and custom Bot
Microsoft teams is chat based workspace with persistent chat, conversation, one-to-one call, meeting, file store etc. there are many more capabilities Teams has. To use Teams effectively with all capability Bot is good option. Now you will ask what is Bot? Basically, Bots are preconfigured and automated programs that are set up to respond to queries or give updates and notifications about things you find interesting or want to stay informed about. Bots don’t have modes like human and they are always available which will be beneficial.
In Microsoft Teams, you can chat with Bot just as if they were a person. In Teams inbuilt Bot called as T-Bot, which are designed to chat one-on-one, Bot are ready whenever you have questions about Microsoft Teams, or if you need help with, channel, calls, meetings, task management, scheduling, and polling. Other bots can be added to your teams in Microsoft Teams, so they'll be able to post messages in channels. That way, Bot can keep your entire team up-to-date without your manual involvement. It is always online and does not have a mood message.
T-Bot is a useful bot that's available in Teams to help employee to learn how to use Microsoft Teams! Ask a question or type a keyword or phrase into a chat with T-Bot, and it will find the answer for them.
Figure: T-Bot answers question
T-Bot's mainly use for to answer questions about Microsoft Teams, so there's no command list that you can call up to see what T-Bot can do. There's also no way to write new commands for T-Bot.
Can I make T-Bot as favorite?
You can actually do favorite or unfavorite T-Bot, by right-click on the chat itself or click the more icon to the right.
Figure: T-Bot Favorite
If you are adding T-Bot to your favorites, this will ensure that your chat stays at the top of your chat list. If you ever want to remove that chat from your favorites, enter the same menu and select Remove from favorites.
How to disable T-Bot?
T-Bot actually help you to get comfortable using Microsoft Teams and there is no way to disable T-Bot entirely. However, you can disable tip and tricks send by T-Bot, if you decide to not to receive tips and tricks in the future, you can always disable them.
Search T-Bot chat and then click the more icon next to the T-Bot chat. That will open up a menu that gives you the option to Disable tips and tricks, like below image.
Figure: T-Bot Disable Tips and Tricks
Once you select that option, T-Bot will only talk to you if you send it a question or comment. If you ever want to turn tips and tricks back on, go to the same menu and select Enable tips and tricks. That’s all about T-Bot.
Currently T-bot chat queries and responses supported in four the following languages:
- English (US)
- French
- German
- Spanish
Check Bot adding to Teams:
Now you will ask, how to check the bots that have been added to a team, it very simple;
Click the more icon next to the team name >then select View team or manage team.
Figure: Bot list using Manage
and then click on Bots tab. You'll see a list of the bots that have been added to that team.
You can also click Discover bots at the top right corner of your team view to see the bots that are available in Microsoft Teams.
So far there are 30 inbuilt Bot available.
How do I add a Bot to my Team?
As we see above discovering and adding Bot is very easy, to add a bot is to click in the search bar, and choose the Discover bots option at the bottom of the list. From here, you can add bots to your one-on-one conversations and teams. Another way to add bots to a team is to select View team from More options next to your team name and clicking the Bots tab. From here, click Discover bots to find bots and add them to your team.
Remember, though, you can only add bots to teams if your team owner has enabled team members to do so.
Click on Pluse sign and new page will open then click on Add:
Now you can see “SurveyMonkey” Bot is added to my Team.
Figure: SurveyMonkey Bot got added.
What is a custom Bot and How do I use IT?
Custom Bots are great way to increate productivity. There are many inbuilt Bots available in Teams however, if there is no bot that does not do, what you want, you can create a custom bot that will integrate the service you want into Microsoft Teams so it's usable in any of your channels.
e.g. You can create a custom bot to send a daily Teams activity, weather report or to remind you to break for lunch. To get a better idea of how to use our framework to create your own bots, go to https://aka.ms/microsoftteamscustombots.
Creating your own personalized bots and adding them to a team is quick and easy. And if you're handy with code, you can create your own custom bot! For more information about how to do that, click https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-teams/botscreate.
Open Team and click on teams list. Then click the more icon next to the team and select View team and navigate to the Bots tab.
Once you're there, you'll see a link that says Create a custom bot in the bottom right corner of your screen. Click through, and then name your bot, provide a callback URL, and add a description and an avatar (if you like). See the below image for custom Bot.
Click on “Create an outgoing webhook | Sideload a bot or tab”
Image
Next page will allow you to configure how your bot appears in channels:
- Name is what will show up as the bot’s title and is also how users will @mention the bot
- Callback URL is the endpoint that will receive messages from Teams
- Description is a detailed string that what will show up in the profile card and in the team-level App dashboard
- Avatar is the optional display picture of the custom bot
You can easily see all custom Bots available in Teams, Open Teams and then click on the ... next to the team name in your teams list. Then, select View team and open up the Bots tab within that view. There, you'll see a list of all the custom bots that you or your teammates have created.
Once you communicate with your custom Bot, to chat with custom Bot in a channel, simply @mention the bot by name in a message. For now, you can only @mention and chat with bots in channels, not one-on-one.
Once you add a custom bot to a specific team, you won't be able to chat with it automatically from other teams. What you can do is set up a custom bot in another team that integrates with the same service! You'll just need to go through the setup process each time you want to add your custom bot to a new team.
Thank you.
