Microsoft Teams Integration


Maxine Anderson
Last Updated: 3 weeks ago
  1. Teams Bot Installation Process

  2. Teams "you cannot send messages to this bot" troubleshooting

  3. Adding Hyperlink Text to Course Lesson

  4. How to White Label the Teams Bot

  5. How to Manually Allow Teams for Individuals

Teams Bot Installation Process

Setting Up the Arist Teams Bot

Purpose: Modify (or create) an App Setup Policy in Teams in order to create Learners and Teams Addresses in your integrated Arist Organization.

Follow these steps to setup the Arist Teams Bot for your organization:

  1. Connect Your Teams Tenant to your Arist Organization: Input your organization's Teams Tenant ID into the Arist web platform via Settings > Integrations tab:

  2. Globally allow the Arist Teams App in your Tenant:

    1. You will either do this via the older “Manage apps” and “Permission policies” interfaces if your tenant maintains these

      • The older “Manage apps” view > Search “Arist” > Ensure “Available to” = “Everyone:

      • The older “Permission policies” view > add “Arist” to any “Allow specific and block all others” policies, or just ensure that the Global policy “allows all apps”

    2. Or “Manage apps”, https://admin.teams.microsoft.com/policies/manage-apps, if your tenant has migrated to the App centric management interface:

      • Navigate to Manage Apps > Search “Arist” and select “Edit availability”:

      • In the Edit availability window, select “Everyone”:

  3. Perform the Arist Teams App Installation via Teams App Setup Policy: In the Teams Admin Center, choose one of the following:

    1. Option 1 (recommended for org-wide access): Add the Arist App to the Global (org-wide default) policy or any existing policy applied to the broad desired subset of users.

    2. Option 2 (for specific users): Create a new Group Policy and assign the Arist Bot to it (instructions), then assign the policy to your organization or a subset of users (instructions).

After the policy update or assignment, Arist will create the Teams Address for each user upon their first activity**, allowing them to receive learning content from Arist.

Note: Users will not receive messages from Arist until enrolled in learning by an administrator.

After the policy update or assignment, Arist will create the Teams Address for each user upon their first activity**, allowing them to receive learning content from Arist.

Note: Users will not receive messages from Arist until enrolled in learning by an administrator.

* Policy update or assignment includes

  • The addition of the Arist App to an already-assigned Teams App Setup Policy, or

  • The roll out of a newly-assigned Teams App Setup Policy that includes the Arist App.

** Activity includes

  • reloading a page, navigating to another page, messaging a colleague, logging out, or logging in to Teams.

Important recommendation:

To ensure a smooth roll-out, install the Teams Bot at least ~1 day per 10K users before launching Arist course(s) to a large group, as the custom policy requires user activity to initiate the user acquisition process (detailed above). For example, for 50K users, it may take about 5 days.


Arist Permissions Provided with this App Policy

  • When the Arist app is installed for a user, Teams sends an install event notification to Arist. That event includes an id that Arist will use to get the Teams member info. Arist will call TeamsInfo.getMember(context, [member.id](<http://member.id/>)). The call will return teams_email, teams_first_name, teams_last_name, conversation.id, and original details from the install event that do not contain any additional identifying information about the user.

  • The Arist Bot will have permission to privately message any user created through this policy without being prompted first by the learner.

  • Arist will only engage with users for the first time after they are enrolled in a course by an administrator or self-enroll through an Arist Admin-provided URL.

Product Experience

For Arist Admins Delivering Learning over Arist MS Teams Bot

  • Admins enroll employees in MS Teams courses through the secure Arist Web App for admins (arist.app).

For Employees Learning over MS Teams

  • Learners will only receive a direct message from the Arist bot when they are enrolled in a course by an administrator. No messages or notifications will be sent upon installation.

Data Security and Privacy

  • Arist is SOC-2 compliant.

  • Arist adheres to strict data security and privacy standards, ensuring that all user information is stored securely and accessed only by authorized personnel.

  • User data is encrypted both in transit and at rest, following industry best practices.

  • Arist complies with relevant data protection regulations, such as GDPR and CCPA, to protect user privacy.

  • Regular security audits and penetration testing are conducted to identify and address any potential vulnerabilities.

By implementing this app setup policy and granting the necessary permissions, your organization can leverage the Arist Teams Bot to deliver engaging and effective learning experiences to a broad range of audiences within the company, while maintaining a secure environment.

Cannot Interact With The Arist Teams Bot

Sometimes you may receive an enrollment in a lesson on Teams and notice the message "you cannot send messages to this bot". This is currently a known bug on the Teams side and if this happens try the following to unblock and keep progressing:

  • Check the bot isn’t blocked, if it is, unblock it by right clicking on the channel and selecting "unblock bot conversation"

  • If the bot isn’t blocked, simply try blocking and unblocking which often removes the message.

  • Finally, if you are in the new Teams, try logging out and back in which should reset the issue.

  • Otherwise, we recommend that users clear their Teams cache , as a corrupted teams cache causes many issues and this clears most of them.

If none of those things work, We'd love if we could chat directly with someone this is happening for and hopefully get some better insight into what is triggering this as we haven’t been able to get a lot from past reports. 

How to create clickable text hyper in this article for your Course Lessons.

You can distribute a Course Lesson with a clickable text hyperlink as an Admin.

Hyperlinks are words or images that can be clicked to access other web material. They can link to practically any online resource. When you click them, they'll either immediately take you to a website or, for some file formats, provide you with the option to open a document with an app (such as Adobe Reader to open a PDF).

Instructions on how to set up the clickable hyperlink text in a Course Lesson:

  1. Inside your Course or Lesson section(s), click on the “Description/Body” field.

  2. Inside the "Description/Body" field, to create a clickable hyperlink, enclose the link text of your choice in the middle closed brackets, then follow it with a URL in closed parentheses.

    Example:
    [Speed Test by Ookla](https://www.speedtest.net/)

    Expected
    Results:
    Speed Test by Ookla

    Use Case:
    Now you can add this to your Course Lessons in Teams, where your Learners can click on these active links to be taken to another page.

White Labeling the Arist App in Microsoft Teams

Adding your company's brand and colors to the Arist App are easy by following these simple steps in Microsoft Teams:

  1. Login to your Microsoft Teams Admin Center

  2. Go to Teams Apps > Manage Apps

  3. Search for the Arist App

  4. Click on it to pull up the app settings page

  5. In the top right hand corner click on the Actions dropdown and select Customize

  6. Here you'll be able to change the App name, Display Logo and Color Scheme

  7. Click Apply to save your changes.

Note: These changes may take 24-48 hours to propagate to all users within your Microsoft Teams Tenant. If you don't immediately see the changes on your end, you also may have to log out and back in to your Microsoft Teams Account or try refreshing your page using Command + Shift + R.

How to Manually Allow Teams for Individuals

Introduction

Arist is a messaging-based learning platform that delivers interactive courses directly in your Teams chat. This tutorial will guide you through the simple process of installing and setting up the Arist app in Microsoft Teams.

Note: You should only go through these steps if directed by an administrator or leader at your company. In many cases, Arist will be will be installed by your Teams admin, making it unnecessary

Step 1: Access the Apps Section

  1. Open Microsoft Teams

  2. Click on the "Apps" icon in the left sidebar

  3. This will take you to the Apps marketplace

Step 2: Search for Arist

  1. In the search bar at the top, type "Arist"

  2. Press Enter or click the search icon

  3. The search results will display various apps including Arist

Step 3: Select the Arist App

  1. Locate the Arist app in the search results (it has a red triangle logo)

  2. Click on the Arist app to view more details

  3. You'll see an overview of the app including ratings and description

Step 4: Add the App

  1. Click the "Add" button

  2. Wait for the confirmation message "Added successfully!"

Step 5: Start Using Arist

  1. After adding successfully, click "Open" to launch the app immediately

  2. Once opened, you'll see a welcome message

  3. The welcome message explains how Arist works:

    • As a learner, you can reply directly to course content

    • Arist Admins can share course content directly to your Teams chat

    • Arist removes the need to log into a different platform!

  4. For additional help, click on the "Help" or "About" buttons, or visit the help center

Happy Learning!


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