Microsoft Teams: Start a chat in Jira

Start a Microsoft Teams conversation right in your Jira issue. Select a Microsoft Teams channel or start a chat. The issue will be linked with the conversation in Microsoft Teams.

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Facts & Benefits

• Benefit: Quickly reach out out to customers (internal/external) via MS Teams chats

• Messages from Jira or from MS Teams appear instantly in either tool (real-time communication)

• Add even more people to an existing chat, if required

• Benefit: Define sharing options for each chat (private, shared, shared & allow joining)

• Benefit: Customers / team members not having access to Jira (no active Jira license), can still join the conversation in MS Teams

• Choose between different chats and conversations in the issue and keep information documented where you need it (Meetings chats, 1:1, channel conversations)

• Benefit: Use our chat (bot) notifications to be updated on any issue changes in MS Teams (for Jira Software and Jira Service Management)

Start a chat in Jira

Depending on how the feature appearance is configured and if you are using the new or old issue view, you can start this action a bit differently.

We assume you are using the default settings with the new Jira issue view.

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Start a chat in issue

Select the Teams icon in your Jira issue, click on it and select “chat” in the dropdown menu.

Add chat participants and enter your message.

JSM only: a label tells you, if the chat is customer facing or internal.

Chat templates

When starting a chat from your Jira issue, you can choose among preconfigured templates.

This makes it easy for e.g. agents to react on tickets even quicker via preset responses.

Shared chat access

When you share a chat within a Jira issue, you can give (read-only) access to other Jira users, that have access to this issue, e.g. other agents in a JSM project. Even though they are not a participant of the chat, they’ll still be able to view the chat content. This works by using our existing share-functionality, which allows you to give other Jira users very narrow access, to access the chat info on your behalf.

Permissions

Private

This respects all Teams default permissions, e.g. only members of the chat can access chat contents.

Shared

This gives read-only access to all Jira users or JSM agents that have access to this issue, and are logged in with Microsoft Teams.

Shared & allow joining

This gives read-only access to all Jira users or JSM agents that have access to this issue, and are logged in with Microsoft Teams. In addition, if a user wants to participate in the chat, they can simply join the chat on their own.

Chat notifications

With chat notifications enabled, our app will post issue updates into the MS Teams chat.

Those notifications are available for Jira Service Management and Jira Software/Business.

However, there are some technical differences about this feature and its settings. Learn more below.

Jira Software/business

With Jira Software/business projects, you can allow (chat) notifications every time you start a new MS Teams chat from the issue (see screenshot).

Technically, it is our Smart Connect for Jira app which acts like a bot here and thus posts issue updates in the respective MS Teams chat.

Settings

The configuration of the chat notifications for Jira Software/Business projects is done in our global Jira admin settings.

You can select notifications in Teams from issue changes and issue field changes.

Jira Service Management

With Jira Service Management projects, you can allow (chat) bot notifications every time you start a new MS Teams chat from the issue (see screenshot) - even incl. CSAT collection.

Technically, it is our customer portal app which acts like a bot here (e.g. IT Support portal) and thus, posts updates to the issue in the respective MS Teams chat.

Settings

With JSM projects, you can not define the notification settings as individually as you can do with Jira Software projects (see above).

Chat notifications in JSM projects comprise:

• Customer facing status changes

• Jira comments

• Approvals

• Resolutions

Personal notifications

You can enable personal notifications in JSM projects via the project settings.

This will send customer facing status updates, approvals, comments and resolutions to the reporter of the issue and to request participants into the activity tab in MS Teams as read-only chat messages.

Those messages are sent (just like the chat notifications for JSM projects) from the customer portal app (acting as a bot) from your e.g. IT Support portal.

Recommendations

• Use personal notifications in projects where communication with customers is done via comments.

• Use chat notifications in projects where communicating via issue-related MS Teams chats.

Compact view of chats

Just like you’re possibly using it in Microsoft Teams, we offer a compact view of your chats and channel conversations in your Jira issue. For some people this view option might help to display information a bit clearer and more compact.

Setting

You have two options to activate the compact view of MS Teams chats in your issue.

Add chat messages as Jira comments

One of your MS Teams chat messages contains relevant content or important information which needs to be shared with the whole team? Then make this chat message a Jira comment and keep your team updated.

Choose the respective message > click on the “..:" dots > and select the speech bubble to the bottom.

Chat with external/guest users

In Microsoft Teams, you can chat and collaborate with users of other organizations in two different ways.
You can read more about the differences here: Collaborate with people outside your organization.

External users

Creating a chat with external users (Business Accounts on Office 365) works the same way as with internal users. Just enter the email address of the external contact when creating a chat.

Check if an external user is available trough Teams chat

There are a few requirements for an external chat to work:

• The external contact needs to have a Microsoft Teams account for their email address

• The organization of the external contact needs to allow chats with your organization

• Your organization needs to allow chats with the external organization

To check if this is possible:

1. Open a new chat in Microsoft Teams and enter the email address of the contact.

2. After clicking “Search […] externally” it will show you one of two messages:

Guest users

Workaround

You can work around this limitation by creating the chat first and then adding the guest user afterwards in Microsoft Teams.

It’s a known bug on Microsoft side and we hope to be able to support this soon.

References

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/communicate-with-users-from-other-organizations

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/manage-external-access

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/guest-access

Backup chats

You can make a backup of selected chats and channel discussions (a static PDF file will be added to the Jira issue, e. g. for audit purposes) and keywords of the discussion will be added as internal comment.

Even if the chat or conversation has been deleted in Microsoft Teams, the static PDF file will still be documented in your Jira issue.

Appearance settings

Basically we offer 3 different view settings:

• Issue content view

• Quick create area

• Activity tab

Feature requirements

In order to start a MS Teams chat in Jira, the following set-up and configuration needs to done:

• Step 1: Activate Teams feature in the admin settings JIRA ADMIN TO DO

• Step 2: Install the Microsoft Teams app MS 365 ADMIN TO DO MICROSOFT TEAMS OWNER TO DO

Jira & Microsoft deployment

• Jira Cloud, Jira Server & Data Center (Server needs to be publicly available)

• Microsoft 365 & MS Exchange