The world has turned into a digital hub. Thanks to the pandemic, there has been a global shift for organizations after embracing remote work. The trend will continue, with many organizations adopting remote work to increase the well-being of their workforce.
According to Upwork, 73% of departments will have remote workers by 2028. With more people working from home, teamwork and information exchange is paramount. One of the best–possible approaches to provide ongoing support to a remote team and ensure the optimal functioning of your organization is via collaboration platforms. Top IT companies like Microsoft have created communication tools like Microsoft Teams to help employees stay connected with their co-workers regardless of location.
Microsoft Teams is your central hub for collaboration. Be it team meetings, workplace chat, videoconferencing, presentations, or sharing data and apps, everything is saved in a single shared workspace. The best part is you can access it from any device, making it one of the best-bet platforms that guarantee a collaborative working atmosphere and ongoing employee support while maximizing efficiency.
By October 2020, MS Teams had surpassed 115 million daily active users, a 475% increase from November 2019. A whopping 2.7 billion meeting minutes were logged in a single day in March.
Current uses of IT support using MS Teams:
- Collaboration on a document
- Team conversation and one-on-one chat
- Application Integration
- Video meetings
- File storage
- For data visibility and governance
Microsoft Office integration options
- To schedule online live events
A bot is a new feature/functionality in Microsoft Teams that enables you to engage with and acquire information from a program or website in a text/search/conversational way.
In truth, bots are basically automated intelligence programs. They’re delivering us several things but most significantly, it’s in a natural and accurate language. Bots are sophisticated enough to both grasp what we are requesting but also deliver in similarly detailed language back to us. Of course, we only want information that is useful to the user based on queries or status updates connected to the individual seeking the information.
When we look at how we all used to get information, you’ll notice that whenever we seek information, whether it’s on the internet or a particular website, we always need to utilize Search Tabs.
Whether you’re searching on Bing, Google, or a more complicated search engine like SharePoint or a website, it doesn’t matter. You must understand how to utilize search, what operators to employ, and how to use that search effectively to discover relevant information. Search engines present general information based on your search criteria in your search tabs.
That method of gathering information has improved, and we now use more natural language in our searches. Whether you’re using Cortana, Alexa, Google, or Siri, we’ll first ask those virtual assistants to give us information.
The way we search for information has evolved. We’re approaching it from the standpoint of a discussion. This will be accommodated by bots, such as those in Microsoft Teams.
No Code — Free MS Teams Chatbot Get Started
What are the benefits of MS Teams Bot?
Bots are customizable and can be a part of a bigger application or created as standalone applications. The majority of bots on the Microsoft Teams platform are designed to boost collaboration and coordination by reducing the need for context switching and automating particular processes or activities. Be it HR, Service desk, or as an ultimate tool of workplace support and collaboration, MS Teams Bot is weaving its magic in each of these sectors enhancing the overall productivity of an individual and the organization.
Here are some benefits of MS Teams Bot in the IT support department: Save time — enhance output
The key advantage of implementing MS Teams Bot is the time savings. The phrase automation relates to mechanization and computerization, which is the process of reducing time and increasing accuracy in a work by increasing speed. Saving time on work is directly tied to freeing up time for the employee to engage in other productive activities rather than executing a job that requires mechanical repetition of procedures.
Minimize expenses
More productivity is achieved when an individual is engaged in more activities that earn the greatest money for your company within the same working hours. Since time and money are constantly intertwined, more productivity implies more money saved for the company.
Fewer human errors
Since MS Teams Bot removes the human intervention leading to an automated workflow resulting in fewer administrative mistakes. Humans are prone to errors but automated programs, on the other hand, do not produce errors. The next job is automatically triggered in an automated workflow system through MS Teams Bot, and the person in charge of the task is also informed of the action anticipated by him. As a result, there is no mishap or faulty processes leading to erroneous results.
Incorporate features from other services
Microsoft Teams has an app store, similar to Android and iOS. Bots from other organizations and services are all available in the Teams app store. You can occasionally engage with the bot directly in Teams after installing it to gather, capture, and submit important data. For example, Zoom’s Microsoft Teams connection lets you use bot instructions to initiate or join meetings.
Service desk transformation
Every year, billions of dollars are spent on software linked to digital transformation. IT Service Desks are now in charge of integrating these new service desk software installations that are tied to substantial digital transformation programs. As a consequence, ticket traffic is increasing, putting pressure on ticketing costs and the IT service desk. Virtual agents, such as bots, can help the IT service desk become lean and flexible, allowing end-users to remain afloat and sail over the technological tsunami. MS Team bots, which are filled with specific IT service Desk knowledge bases and self-service portals, may help minimize the number of calls to support operations. AI, automation, and bots can also be used to execute the ITIL framework’s best practices for integrating service delivery with strategic goals.
Simplified approvals
Approval procedures that are clumsy slow down whole workflows. When manual approvals are required, employees often spend hours submitting papers by hand and following down on approvers. Approval procedures are streamlined as a result of digitization and process automation. To avoid delays, automated alerts notify approvers of new documents, while reminders indicate that approval is still waiting. Thanks to MS Teams Bots, staff no longer have to pursue approvals since they are signed off on right away due to automatic alerts.
Useful data
Reports containing graphical data for enhanced visibility are a significant advantageous aspect of an automated process. With precise insights from MS Teams Bots, IT teams can rapidly detect crucial bottlenecks like resource allocation and component availability and avoid expensive overruns. The capacity to take action based on relevant data in a timely way is feasible with automation and the capturing of important performance measures.
Enhanced task management
Improvement in Task Management is yet another important advantage of process automation which is a major benefit of MS Teams Bot. This again leads to greater communication. Due to automation, multiple departments can remain in contact more readily, enhancing communication. All automated workflows generally come with Tasks showing ‘Dashboards’ and reminders intimating ‘Calendars’ which are available to all people utilizing the process which is another feature of automated workflows — ‘Visibility’. This allows Managers to rapidly identify the status, bottlenecks, and chances for process improvement.
Tickets are resolved more quickly.
Employees may interact more quickly, resulting in shorter ticket waits. They can locate experts, interact with them, and resolve cases quicker thanks to the ChatOps bot, which helps them identify other professionals who have worked on similar issues.
Find information without having to switch contexts.
Agents may access information about tickets, related occurrences, and knowledge articles without moving between apps by using natural language and instructions in Microsoft Teams. Agents do not need to hop between Microsoft Teams and Smart IT to update an issue. They may use the chat to add activity comments, change the assignee, and update the ticket status
Collaboration is simple
When a problem is reported, utilizing the Microsoft Teams channel makes collaborating extremely simple. Employees may pool their knowledge to work on problems and solve them swiftly.
Issues are less likely to bounce back.
Previously, a problem would bounce from one team to the next, sometimes numerous times, while the company tried to locate a team that could push the issue to resolution. With MS Teams Bots, IT employees can interact with specialists from other teams and fix them without having to bounce them back and forth.
Increase in productivity
Most IT employees are responsible for a large number of activities that are simple yet take a long time to complete Routine chores like scheduling meetings across several employee calendars, arranging meeting rooms, reporting hours, and compiling reports can become a productivity killer. MS Team Bots can be used to drastically reduce time by automating them. Employees can now devote more time to critical activities, resulting in increased efficiency and output.
Other advantages of using Microsoft Teams chatbots include:
- Support is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
- Troubleshooting procedures such as printing, internet connection, and more can be automated.
- Authentication of users
- Assist in the resolution of work-from-home concerns
- Requests for software and hardware will be recorded automatically
- The management approval procedure is automated
- Staff will be notified of any outages, whether they are urgent or planned.
- Integrates with your current ITSM tools, such as ServiceNow
- Provides the same capability in Microsoft Teams and SharePoint.
- Extract data from existing knowledge bases, FAQs, and user manuals and send it to a popular chat service like Microsoft Teams.
Did you know you can transform your Teams into an internal IT help desk with on-the-go self-service?
Workativ is a no-code interface solution that lets you create sophisticated, intelligent, and responsive conversational chatbots that work in tandem with Microsoft Teams. We collaborate with you to design your AI’s persona, reactions, and more — and the greatest thing is that your bot learns and improves its responses based on the feedback it gets. More information can be provided to the bot as more people interact with it via Teams, allowing it to improve its level of help. The bot also collects data that allows us to provide you with information such as demographics, the most popular times to contact online support, and other information that allows us to personalize your experience better.
Use Workativ today to sky-rocket your organizational productivity!
This blog was original and published here.
MS Teams Bot: The future of ITSM (Ultimate Guide -2023) was originally published in Chatbots Life on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.