Microsoft Teams Blameless Bot

The Microsoft Teams Blameless Bot allows users to easily orchestrate activities with less toil using a comprehensive framework to work, resolve, and inform regarding issues.

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The Teams Blameless Bot is available on the Microsoft AppSource.

We recommend you first read through our Microsoft Teams integration setup for directions on how to install the bot first.

Getting Started

Working in Microsoft Teams

For those who have used Slack before, Microsoft Teams handles the bot commands differently:

1. Displaying available commands in Microsoft Teams In Teams, when a user enters the following command in an incident channel, you can retrieve a list of available Blameless commands:

@blameless + type ENTER click the “Send” button (arrow icon) or type ENTER a second time.

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Once you enter the @command, you must press ENTER and then the SEND button (Arrow icon). This sequence will then display the list of available commands.

2. Threads vs. Conversations In Microsoft Teams, Microsoft identifies what Slack calls “Threads” as “Conversations”.

3. Where’s the Microsoft Teams response? When you enter an @blameless command in Microsoft Teams, scroll down if you do not see the expected result on your screen as the active window does not automatically advance into the viewing frame.

4. Executing Commands You have to click on the “Run selected command” button after you select a command to execute it.

5. Where am I? Look at the structure of the Microsoft Teams Conversation. The Description line at the top ic the working frame will identify the location. For example:

Once the Blameless bot is installed, you can start an incident in Teams by mentioning the bot @blameless from any channel that the Blameless Bot has access to.

Upon mentioning the bot, it will provide you a list of command options, including starting an incident and showing recent incidents.

Starting an Incident

1. Click on "Start Incident". The bot will then prompt you to specify a type (required), severity (required), Pagerduty service (if enabled) title (required), description, and a request the relevant Microsoft Teams Team name.

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The Description is a field separate from the title.

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The Pagerduty Service field only appears in the Start Incident window, if the Pagerduty integration is enabled in Blameless.

The Opsgenie Service field only appears in the Start Incident window, if the Opsgenie integration is enabled in Blameless.

The ServiceNow Service field appears in the Slack Start Incident window, if the ServiceNow integration is enabled in Blameless.

2. Start typing the relevant team name and the bot will provide a list of matching names. Once the incident starts, the bot will create a dedicated incident channel and display a summary.

Incident Management via the Blameless Microsoft Teams Bot

After creating an incident, it's time to work through the incident and manage it with the help of the bot, including tasks, roles, incident lifecycle, data collection and more. The dedicated incident channel will be populated with the incident summary for immediate context.

As a first step, the incident creator will be prompted with some suggested actions to start managing the incident.

In addition to the initial suggestions, the Blameless Bot provides several commands to facilitate workflows during the incident.

The following table lists available bot commands to help manage the various aspects of an incident.

Category	Available Commands
Incident	Assign Incident Role Set Incident Status Set Incident Type Set Incident Severity Set Incident Title Set Incident Description Show Incident Invite User to Incident Mark Incident as Duplicate Resolve Incident Delete Incident
Tasks	Add Task Assign Task View All Tasks View Your Tasks
Tags	Show Tags Manage Tags
On-Call	Show On-Call Show Escalation Policy Trigger Alert
Timeline Events	Add Timeline Message Show Timeline Events
Advanced	Assign Retrospective Role Send Retrospective as Email

Incident Commands

Assign Incident Roles

Users can assign roles by selecting a role/user combination from the dropdowns.

Upon role assignment, the bot will show a success message and display the tasks list for the current incident phase.

Set Incident Status

Users can move the incident through the various phases by selecting the incident phase they'd like to transition to.

Set Incident Type

Users can set the incident type by selecting a new incident type.

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As noted in the window, changing the incident type will not affect the tasks created for the incident, based on the previous incident type.

Set Incident Severity

Users can change the incident severity by selecting a new severity.

Set Incident Title

Users can set the incident title by entering it in the text area.

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The Title is a field separate from the description.

Set Incident Description

Users can set the incident description by entering a description in the text area.

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The Description is a field separate from the title.

Resolve Incident

When you are ready to resolve an incident, simply select the option from the dropdown and the bot will resolve the incident and you may begin the retrospective process.

Upon resolution, the bot will provide a final, updated, incident rundown summary in the channel, and an updated task list for the Resolved state.

Delete Incident

Upon deleting an incident, the bot will delete the incident channel, as well as the incident itself from the Blameless system.

Show Incident

The Show Incident command will display the latest incident rundown in the incident channel.

Invite User to Incident

You can explicitly invite users to the existing incident by selecting the user from the dropdown. Invited users will automatically be added to the incident team in our web UI as Participants.

1. Select the desired action. (i.e., "Invite User to Incident").

2. Select the "Run selected command" button.

The "Invite User" search window opens.

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All fields are mandatory (*).

3. Start your search by entering a name in the "Search for user" dropdown field and click on the "Search" button.

4. Click on the "Invite User to Incident" button when you find the desired user.

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A User can reuse the same window to make another search query and/or invite other users.

5. Select the next user to invite (if multiple invitations) from the same window and repeat the search process. As each invitation fills, Microsoft Teams will display the invite list below the dropdown field.

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If the user is not found, Microsoft Teams will display a failure notification in the window.

Mark Incident as Duplicate

To mark an incident as a duplicate specify the other, duplicate, incident and its ID. As a result, the bot will mark the incident as a duplicate in the Blameless system, adjust the status to DUPLICATED, and add an entry to the incident timeline to reflect the change.

Tasks

The Blameless bot facilitates managing tasks during an incident via several commands designed to allow for ease when adding, assigning, and completing your incident tasks.

Tasks provide a mechanism by which you can ensure that certain items are completed or suggested during an incident lifecycle. These tasks can be assigned to each phase of the incident, as well as to a specific role or owner.

As the incident progresses through each subsequent phase, the tasks for that phase will become available.

Tasks are grouped by assigned role or by user, if the role has been assigned to a user, which makes it more obvious if a user already owns a set of tasks. Required tasks are tagged with an asterisk, and if they have links, they are displayed as containing a link.

Add New Tasks

1. To create a new task, first select a task assignee type:

• a role specific task or
• a user specific task

2. Next, based on your assignee type selection, select either a user or a role to assign the new task to.
3. Finally, enter a task description and add the task.

Upon successfully creating a new task, the bot will present the task list which includes the newly created task.

Assigning tasks to users

"Task" and "Type of Task" are required fields (*).

1. To assign or reassign a task, first select the Task dropdown command option.
2. Select the and complete the following options within the Assign Task window: a. Select a task from the drop down options. b. Select the Task Assignee type. c. Select the Task Assignee (User). d. Select the Task Assignee (Role).
3. Finally, click on the "Assign Task" button to assign or reassign the task.

Complete a Task

1. To mark a task as complete or incomplete, simply select the "View Tasks" command.
2. Toggle the task checkboxes accordingly.
3. Click "Update".

Upon successfully toggling task states, the bot will respond with a summary of the task changes.

Task Permissions

While any user joining the incident channel can create and assign tasks to users, by default, only the user who has been assigned the task (also known as the task owner) can complete or reassign a task to a different user.

Optionally, a designated role that is configurable per incident type can be given the permission to reassign and/or mark any task as completed or uncompleted. Refer to the "Incident Role with Full Task Permissions" Setting.

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This full task permission would be typically assigned to the incident commander (default) and is configurable on a per incident type basis.

Tags

The Blameless bot allows you to capture metadata during an incident via our flexible tags mechanism. You can manage and view tags by category helping you to enrich your incident data and reporting.

1. To add or remove tags, select the "Manage Tags" option.

You can view your tags at any time via the "View Tags" command.

On-call

The Blameless bot allows you to streamline your on-call workflow during an incident, including the ability to showing on-call, escalation policies, and take action by triggering alerts.

If the integration with Pagerduty is enabled:

If the integration with Opsgenie is enabled

• Users can select one or more Opsgenie services and/or one or more Opsgenie teams (using type ahead search)
• At least one service or one team must be selected.

The list of notified Opsgenie incident responders is displayed with the option to invite them to the incident channel if they are not already a member of the team.

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• The “Trigger Alert” command triggers alerts in Pagerduty if the Pagerduty integration is enabled or Opsgenie if the Opsgenie integration is enabled. If both integrations are enabled (Pagerduty and Opsgenie), alerts are only triggered in Pagerduty.
• If using Pagerduty, you must first import services defined in your Pagerduty account into Blameless. Go to the Pagerduty configuration settings under the Integration section to manually import your Pagerduty services.
• If Opsgenie is enabled, only the “Trigger Alert” command is supported. The “Show Oncall” and “Escalate alert” commands are only available with Pagerduty.

Incident Timeline

You can view the incident timeline at any time, and add a custom event to the timeline via the bot by using our Timeline commands.

1. Select the "Add Timeline Message" command.
2. Enter the message in the Description field.
3. Click on "Add Timeline Message".

During an incident, users can also capture important messages, files, and images as highlights to the incident timeline via the messages action menu. In the top right of the message box click on the ellipse (...) to bring up the “More actions” menu and select “Capture highlight” to automatically capture the text as a new timeline event.

Follow-Up Actions

Follow-up actions can be created at any time during an incident. Simply describe the follow-up action in the Teams chat and then mouse over the message.

1. In the top right of the message box click on the ellipse (...) to bring up the more actions menu and select "Capture as follow-up action" to automatically create a JIRA ticket from the selected text.

Adding Tabs

Blameless allows the addition of Tabs into the following Microsoft Teams channels:

• General
• Incident-specific

You can add these tabs from the Blameless Microsoft Teams bot app.

1. Open the desired channel (General or Incident-specific).
2. Click on the "+" sign located in the upper row of the Channel window. This opens a modal containing a list of supported Apps,

3. Click on the Blameless Logo to open the Blameless custom tabs to add to your Channel.
4. Select the desired tab.
5. Click the "Save" button

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For the General channel you will only be offered the following custom tab:

• Help

The Incident Channel supports both the "Overview" and "Help" custom tabs.

General channel

Every Microsoft Team will have a General channel. General is where you can see a log of who has joined and left. Topic-specific information (i.e., Incident channel activities), are found in the associated channel.

Help Tab

Help in the General channel focus on getting the user up and running:

1. How to Start an Incident.
2. Show a list of unresolved Incidents.
3. How to read the Incident's Card contents.
4. Link to the Blameless Bot documentation for Microsoft Teams Bot.

Incident-specific Channel

Blameless creates specific events associated with an Incident. Topics, conversations, actions, etc. to a specific incident are linked and stored there.

With an Incident channel, you can add two custom tabs:

• Overview
• Help

These custom channels provide more details and support relating to the incident.

Overview Tab

When you click on the Overview tab at the top of the Incident, you will see the following subsections:

Incident Header

Within the incident header you can view and adjust crucial incident properties and metadata. The incident header shows the following incident metadata and properties:

• Incident Title
• Incident severity
• Incident status
• Type
• Ticket
• Meeting

Incident Title

Entered at the start of the Incident.

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You can edit the title (note the pencil icon next to it).

Incident Severity

Supplies the company customized values:

• Sev0
• Sev1
• Sev2
• Sev3

Incident status

Standard status values:

• Investigating
• Identified
• Monitoring
• Resolved
• Duplicated

Type

This is the company-configured Custom Incident Type.

Ticket

The link to the auto-generated Jira ticket.

Meeting

The auto-generated link to the Teams Meeting application.

Event Timeline

As an incident progresses through its lifecycle, Blameless will automatically capture events and add them to the incident timeline. You can easily see the progression of an incident and key events along the way.

Team

Members of the incident team are shown in the team section. Members that have been assigned to roles will be pinned at the top of the list, followed by the remaining participant members.

Help Tab

When you add the Help tab to an incident, the following information is made available:

• Available Bot Commands
• Incident Overview
• Highlights and Follow ups
• Link to the Blameless Bot documentation

Available Bot Commands

This includes how to open the Command menu as well as a table list of the available commands.

Incident Overview

This contains an explanation of the role of the Overview in the Incident process.

Highlights and Follow ups explanation

This describes the Highlight and Follow up features and how to apply them to an Incident.

Link to the Blameless Bot documentation

A link to the Blameless Bot reference documentation on the Blameless web site.

Click Here to visit the reference documentation for the Blameless Bot on our website.

Swimlanes

Users may start a swimlane in an incident channel to track a separate conversation which focuses on investigating a problem based on a theory formulated by the incident commander or other participants in the incident channel. Participants can be invited to join this conversation and can be assigned new tasks in this swimlane to refute or confirm the theory. Once the investigation of this theory is completed, the swimlane can be closed.

Refer to the Microsoft Teams Swimlanes Guide for more information.

Advanced Commands

From the advanced menu, users can leverage retrospective related commands, for example, including assigning retrospective roles, and the ability to send the retrospective via email.

Assign Retrospective Role

1. Select the desired action. (i.e., "Assign Retrospective Role").
2. Select the "Run selected command" button. The "Role select" window opens with two required (*) dropdown fields:

• Assign a user to a retrospective role
• Search for user

3. Select the desired Role (i.e., "Owner") from the dropdown.

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All fields are mandatory.

4. Start your search by entering a name in the "Search for user" dropdown field and click on the "Search" button.

5. Click on the "Assign Retrospective Role" button when you find the desired user.

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A User can reuse the Search window to make another search query and/or assign other users to the same or different roles.

6. Select the next Retrospective role (if multiple assignments exist) from the same window and repeat the search process. As each role fills, Microsoft Teams will display the assignment below the dropdown fields.

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If the user is not found, Microsoft Teams will display a failure notification in the window.

Send Retrospective as an Email

As part of the Available Command options for an Incident, the user can also send the Retrospective, when complete, as an Email to a list of users.

1. Display the "Available Commands for Incident".

2. Select the "Advanced" dropdown option.

3. Locate the "Send Retrospective as Email" command.

4. Click on the "Run selected command" button. The "Send Retrospective as Email" window opens.

5. Enter the desired user email addresses, separated by spaces.

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• One address minimum is required
• No maximum limits (from the bot perspective) on the number of email addresses included
• Retrospective can be emailed to anyone--there is no requirement to be associated with the incident in question

6. Click on the "Send Retrospective as Email" button. Once sent, you will receive confirmation that the Retrospective has been sent.

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• There will be no errors displayed if the email sending fails
• We will receive error only if emails were not properly set for further sending

Supported Integrations

The Blameless bot supports a variety of integrations that provide streamlined workflows during an incident, including JIRA for ticketing, Microsoft Teams Video, Zoom, Google Meet and GoToMeeting for video bridge, ServiceNow, Opsgenie, and Pagerduty for on-call management.

JIRA

With our Blameless bot JIRA integration, a corresponding ticket will be created for each incident, and you may also create follow-up actions as needed during the lifecycle of an incident. Refer to the Jira Integration for more information.

Follow-up Actions

Follow-up actions can be created at any time during an incident.

Simply describe the follow-up action in the Teams chat and then mouse over the message. In the top right of the message box click on the ellipse (...) to bring up the more actions menu and select "Capture as follow-up action" to automatically create a JIRA ticket from the selected text.

Microsoft Teams Video

With our Blameless bot Microsoft Teams video integration, a Microsoft Teams video bridge will be displayed in your incident rundown so you can collaborate more effectively over video together.

Zoom

With our Blameless bot Zoom integration, a Zoom video bridge will be displayed in your incident rundown so you can collaborate more effectively over video together.

GoToMeeting

With our Blameless bot GoToMeeting integration, a GoToMeeting video bridge will be displayed in your incident rundown so you can collaborate more effectively over video together.

Google Meet

With our Blameless bot Google Meet integration, a Google Meet video bridge will be displayed in your incident rundown so you can collaborate more effectively over video together.

PagerDuty

With our Blameless bot PagerDuty integration, you can streamline your on-call workflow during an incident, including the ability to show on-call, escalation policies, and take action by triggering alerts.

Refer to the Pagerduty Integration for more information.

Opsgenie

With our Blameless bot Opsgenie integration, you can auto-trigger for selected Opsgenie services with the creation of a Blameless incident or manually trigger on-demand within an incident channel in Slack or Microsoft Teams

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The Opsgenie Standard or Enterprise subscription is required. Integrate with either PagerDuty or Opsgenie. You cannot activate both at the same time. If you attempt to activate both, alerts are only triggered in Pagerduty.

Refer to the Opsgenie integration for more information.

ServiceNow

With our Blameless bot ServiceNow integration, create a ServiceNow incident ticket when a Blameless incident is created or create a Blameless incident when a ServiceNow incident is created. You can also synchronize data updates bi-directionaly between Blameless and ServiceNow for selected mapped fields.

Refer to the ServiceNow integration for more information.

Statuspage.io

With our Blameless bot Statuspage.io integration, as part of Commsflow, the integration allows:

Creating a new incident on your statuspage from external communications in the workflow Publish updates to an existing incident on your statuspage, from the external communications workflow

Refer to the Statuspage.io integration for more information.