Microsoft Teams

How can I set up Teams notifications for my Contacts?

Hannah avatar
Written by Hannah
Updated over a week ago

Contents

Overview

Our Microsoft Teams integration can notify your account's contacts when their visitors or deliveries have arrived.

An image of a Teams notification notifying someone that a Check-In has occured.

Clicking the details link in the notification will take you to the visit details page on our site, where you can see responses to visitor fields filled out by the visitor, find any agreements they signed, and even have a chat with the visitor if Two-Way Chat is enabled for the button that was used.

Speaking of chat, if you have added Quick Replies to your account, the Microsoft Teams notification message will include buttons for each quick reply to send to your visitor without needing to go to the details page.

Any responses a visitor sends from the iPad used to check-in will be delivered to their employee contact in Microsoft Teams.

If you want to enable this for your organization, please follow the steps below.

Please note that once the integration is turned on, messaging rules can take 30-60 minutes to appear for your contacts.

Prerequisites

Before you set up the Microsoft Teams integration, please ensure the following requirements are in place to avoid complications during setup.

Please keep in mind that any changes made to your Microsoft organization's environment (in Azure Portal or Microsoft Teams Admin Center) may take several hours to come into effect. We recommend waiting one day after saving changes before enabling The Receptionist integration for Microsoft Teams.

Verify Your Microsoft Organization Role

To authorize our integration, a Global Administrator role is needed. You can see if you are a global administrator by going to your Azure Portal's "Roles and Administrators" area. If your role shows up as "Global Administrator," you can consent to our integration. If you cannot access this page or are not a Global Administrator, you must find someone else in your organization to enable the integration.

An image of the Roles And Administrators page of the Azure Portal. The "Your Role:" section has been highlighted.

Allow Third-Party Apps in the Teams App Store

To receive notifications from The Receptionist in Microsoft Teams, our app must be available for installation and uninstallation from the Microsoft Teams App Store. Please have your organization's Teams administrator visit the Microsoft Teams Admin Center, navigate to Teams apps > Manage apps, and click the "Org-wide app settings" button in the upper right. Toggle the "Allow third-party apps" setting to "On" and then click "Save."

An image of the Teams Apps page of Teams. The "Org-wide app settings" section has been highlighted.

Allow The Receptionist App in the Teams App Store

In the Microsoft Teams Admin Center, go to Teams apps > Manage apps, search for "The Receptionist" in the table at the bottom, click our app name, and then click the "Allow" button.

An image of the Manage Apps page of Teams. The search term for The Receptionist and the "Allow" button have been highlighted.

Allow Teams Users to Install The Receptionist App

Go to Teams Apps > Permission policies, and check each policy covering users who will be receiving notifications from The Receptionist in Microsoft Teams. Under "Third-party apps," ensure that "Allow all apps" is selected and then click "Save."

A screenshot of the Permission Policies page of Teams. The "Third-party apps" section has been highlighted and set to Allow all apps.

Alternatively, your Teams administrator may choose "Allow specific apps and block all others." If so, then make sure to click "Allow apps," search for "The Receptionist" to allow it, and then click "Save."

A screenshot of the Permission Policies page of Teams. The "Third-party apps" section has been highlighted and set to Allow specific apps and block all others.

Avoid App Setup Policies

Please do not add The Receptionist app to any Teams app setup policy covering users who will be receiving notifications from The Receptionist in Microsoft Teams. Doing so will prevent our app from uninstalling itself, which is sometimes necessary to set up receiving notifications from The Receptionist.

To ensure an app setup policy does not include The Receptionist, go to Teams apps > Setup policies. For each policy, ensure "The Receptionist" is not on the installed apps list, and then click "Save."

A screenshot of the Setup Policies page of Teams. The "Installed apps" section has been highlighted.

Verify Email Addresses Match

This integration uses email addresses to match your account's contacts with users in your Microsoft organization. Note that we do not use your Teams users' "User Principal Name," which is the username used to sign into Teams, to match.

If the email address field between a Teams user and their corresponding contact does not match, they will not be able to receive notification from The Receptionist in Teams. You can check that these two fields are the same for any contact with the following process:

  1. Go to your account's Contacts page and edit one of your contacts. Note the email address entered.

  2. Go to the Users area of the Azure Portal, find the user corresponding to the contact you edited in Step 1, and verify that the "Email" field (in the "Contact info" section) matches the address from Step 1. Ignore the "User Principal Name" field.

  3. If these don't match, then either edit the contact on the Receptionist or the Microsoft user in the Azure Portal so that they do match.

  4. After making changes, remove and re-add the Microsoft Teams integration to restart the synchronization process.

Getting Started

For most organizations, setting up our Microsoft Teams integration is as easy as enabling it from your account's Integrations page with the Add button.

An image of the Integrations page of the web portal. The Microsoft Teams section has been highlighted.

Authorizing the Integration

After clicking the Add button, you will be taken to Microsoft's consent page. To connect to your Microsoft organization, a Global Administrator of your Microsoft organization will need to sign in and click the Accept button.

An image of Microsoft's consent page. The "Accept" button of the Permissions Requested popup has been highlighted.

Connecting your Contacts

Once you accept the authorization request, we will install our notification bot and set up a Teams notification preference for each contact we match to someone in your Microsoft organization. We send a welcome message when the app is installed to let your contacts know they will receive notifications when visitors and deliveries arrive for them.

An image of The Receptionist's welcome message on Teams.

Do you have questions about setup, security, or additional troubleshooting?

We've compiled a Frequently Asked Questions article that provides even more detail about this new integration! You can also click on that orange chat button in the lower right corner to livechat with a member of The Receptionist team!

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