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Asking Colleag from Microsoft Teams

Teams is another place to ask the same Colleag you use in the workspace. A channel is connected to one product. Write tools stay off — you ask, you do not save or publish from Teams.

This is not listening to a channel as context, and it is not mail. Those are different products.

What you need

  • You are a member of the Colleag organisation.
  • Your Colleag deployment has a Teams bot. The Microsoft Teams card under Settings → Integrations says Unavailable on this deployment when it does not; that is an operator step, not something an admin can fix in Settings.
  • An admin has turned Teams on under Settings → Integrations → Microsoft Teams.
  • The Colleag app is added to the Teams team.
  • The channel is bound to a product.
  • Your Colleag role can chat with the agents (engineer or above). A viewer gets a polite refusal in Teams, the same as in the workspace.

On a customer install that uses the same Microsoft directory as Teams, Colleag already knows who you are. On hosted Colleag you claim your Teams name once (see People).

Install the Colleag app in Teams

Colleag is not in the Teams app store. Your operator hands you a .zip package built for your deployment, and someone uploads it once per Microsoft tenant.

  1. In Teams, click Apps in the left rail.
  2. Manage your apps at the bottom of the panel.
  3. Upload an app → Upload a custom app.
  4. Pick the zip. Teams shows the app page.
  5. On that page, open the arrow next to Add and choose Add to a team. Type the team, pick the channel, Set up a bot.

If Upload a custom app is missing, your Teams administrator has turned custom app upload off. They either turn it back on in the Teams admin center, or upload the package there for the whole tenant under Teams apps → Manage apps → Upload new app.

A tenant can hold a test package and a live one at the same time. They are told apart by name: the staging app is Colleag staging, the production app is Colleag. That name is what you type after @.

Enable Teams

An owner or admin does this once.

  1. Open Settings → Integrations.
  2. Open the Microsoft Teams card (or Settings → Integrations → Teams).
  3. Click Enable.

That does not pick a product yet. It only allows this organisation to use Teams as an ask surface.

The first @Colleag from your Microsoft tenant ties that tenant to this organisation. The card shows which tenant is connected. If the wrong tenant got in first (a test tenant, a partner's), an admin clicks Release tenant; the next @Colleag claims again.

Bind a channel to a product

One channel, one product. Several channels may share the same product. Colleag never guesses the product from the text.

In Teams

  1. Add the Colleag app to the team.
  2. Write @Colleag in the channel.
  3. If you are an admin, pick the product on the card.
  4. Everyone else sees a link to Settings and is asked to wait for an admin.

In Colleag

Settings → Integrations → Teams lists every channel the bot has seen:

Status Meaning
Waiting The bot has seen the channel. Nobody has picked a product.
Bound Questions in that channel use that product.

Choose the product in the list. Remove disconnects it. Changing product asks you to confirm; old messages stay in Teams, new questions use the new product.

The table shows team and channel names. You never type an id.

Ask a question

In a bound channel:

@Colleag what is the BOM status?

Colleag answers as the orchestrator — the same brain as the workspace. A footer names the product and links Open in Colleag.

Follow up with @hardware (or another discipline) the same way you would in the workspace.

Each person's questions in a thread go to their own Colleag conversation: Open in Colleag opens yours, with your history.

Credits, permissions and the audit trail belong to you, not to the channel. Sitting in the room is not permission to read a drawing.

If you are not a Colleag member, the bot refuses and asks an admin to invite you.

People

The first @Colleag from a Teams person Colleag does not know appears under People as Waiting.

  • This is me — you are that Teams person. Later questions run as you.
  • Assign to… — an admin maps the name to another member.

Until someone claims the name, Colleag will not answer as that person.

What Teams will not do

  • Save, commit, publish or import files
  • Write to the ERP
  • Create an Office file in the channel (ask in the workspace, then download — see Reports)
  • Mail someone that they were named responsible (that is email — see Settings)

Next: Reports and downloads →