Connecting MS Teams to your AI Assistant

With your organization's knowledge safely loaded into Vendorful, accessing it is on demand is the next step. While the Vendorful web app provides an interface for responding to written questionnaires, you can also leverage the capabilities of your AI Assistant in a different context. Specifically, you can use Microsoft Teams and/or Slack, to ask specific questions and get answers on demand.

Let's look at the steps you need to take in order to start using Vendorful via Teams.

Make Sure Your Vendorful Account Supports It

Not every account is eligible for Teams integration. If you are unsure or seem unable to connect your Teams to Vendorful despite following the steps that follow, reach out to us for help.

Make Sure Your Teams Account Supports It

In order to use the Microsoft Teams integration, your Teams instance must allow Custom App Uploads.

Activate the Integration in Vendorful

As an authorized user, visit your organization's settings page, which you can access by clicking "Account" in the left sidebar. Note that you might need to reload if your account configuration was updated to enable support for Teams. At the bottom of this page, there is a section that reads "MS Teams Integration," below which you will see a link that reads "Download Microsoft Teams Custom App." (We've got a handy red arrow in the screenshot below to make it easier to find.) And below that, there is a sequence of steps. We will be following these steps and providing additional detail in the paragraphs to follow.

Step 1: Download the Custom App

To this, you can click the link that you can see next to the red arrow in the image above or click the text link manifest.zip file. There is no need to click on both as each points to the same file.

Step 2: Log into the Relevant MS Teams Account

Many people will have multiple Teams accounts, e.g. a personal one and another associated with their job. If you're installing this for use in your company, you're going to want to ensure that you use your corporate Teams account rather than your personal one.

Step 3: Find and Click the App icon in the Teams sidebar

The App icon should be the bottom visual element in the sidebar.

Step 4: Find and Click "Manage your apps" in UI

The "Manage your apps" link is at the bottom of the list that appears to the right of the sidebar.

 

Step 5: Click the "Upload an app" link

The "Upload an app" link appears neat the top of the main window.

Step 6: Click the "Upload a custom app" box

There are two options here. You should click the top one, which reads "Upload a custom app."

Step 7: Select the manifest.zip file that you downloaded

By default, this will be in your "Downloads" folder, but could be elsewhere depending on your browser settings.

Step 8: Click the "Add" Button in the pop-up window

Bear in mind that in the screenshot below, the name will appear slightly differently as it includes the term "staging." That's because the documentation is being developed via our staging environment. In the production environment, which is the one you, a customer, access, you will not see the term "staging."

Step 9: Link your Vendorful AI Account

Now that you've installed the Vendorful App for Teams, you need to link it to your Vendorful AI account. To this, first click the "Link Vendorful AI Account" link which should be displayed automatically in MS Teams. Once you've completed the previous step, you will be able to chat with the Vendorful AI Assistant directly from MS Teams.

This will take you back to the Vendorful AI web application. From there, you simply click the "Linked Microsoft Teams to your Vendorful AI Assistant."

After doing this, you'll be redirected back to your Account settings where you'll see the MS Teams Integration has been activated and an ID generated.

Step 10: Test One-on-One Chat

In the MS Teams chat window that was automatically created and opened, you can type a question for your AI Assistant to answer. Remember that your Assistant can only address questions that it can answer using information in your Content Library. So when you are testing, make sure to ask a question it can answer to verify that things are working as expected. In this example, the Content Library has information about document extraction.

Step 11: Add the AI Assistant to a Group Chat

This process is very similar to the previous once, but not identical. Make sure to follow the steps one at a time to ensure a successful install. First, find and click into the group chat to which you want to add the Vendorful AI Assistant. In the example below, we're going to add it to "Our Group Chat." Click the + sign next to Files near the top of the main window.

Click "Manage Your Apps"

Click "Upload an app"

Select the manifest file:

Click "Add"

Click "Set up a bot"

You now now access the Vendorful AI Assistant directly from your group chat.

Using Teams

Now that Teams is connected to your Vendorful AI Assistant, you can ask it questions. As with the questionnaire response, the responses are synthesized from your content library. This means that if there isn't content relating to your question, the Assistant will not be able to answer. If you are a software company, for example, and have product documentation in your content library, then the AI Assistant should be able to answer questions relating to your product. However, if you inquire as to the best seafood restaurant in New Jersey, you will not get an answer. (Unless, that is, you have populated your content library with information relating to seafood restaurants.)

There are two approaches to query your AI Assistant:

One-on-One Chat

In your one-on-one chat, you can do as was described earlier.... Simply type and you'll get an answer from the AI Assistant.

Group Chat

In a group chat, you need to direct the question at your AI Assistant. You do this with the @ symbol, just as you would when you want to direct a message to a specific colleague.

⁠Specifically, you'll want to do @Vendorful AI Assistant. When you start typing @V, Teams should suggest an autocompletion with the full name.

Removing the Integration

On the MS Teams Side

Click "Apps" on the sidebar and then "Manage Your Apps" in the bottom of adjacent area that is revealed. From there, you can see your apps. Just expand the Vendorful AI Assistant and click the garbage can icon.

In Vendorful

Click on the "Accounts" link in the left sidebar. Find the Teams integration and click the garbage can icon to remove it.