Configuring Employee Navigator in the Microsoft Teams chat

As an administrator, configure Employee Navigator to integrate with Microsoft Teams, so employees can easily ask workplace-related questions or manage service requests directly from Microsoft Teams. This integration, powered by BMC HelixGPT, streamlines the management of workplace tasks and provides guided responses in a familiar conversational interface, saving time. The links provided in the chat responses direct users to the native application, offering quick access.

Scenario

Allen, a BMC Helix Digital Workplace administrator with HelixGPT admin permissions, configures Microsoft Teams as a communication channel. With this integration, employees like Britney can use Employee Navigator chat to handle workplace tasks through Microsoft Teams, their main conversation platform.

Britney, an HR coordinator, is attending her team’s daily scrum on Microsoft Teams. During the meeting, she notes two pending tasks:

Ask about the standard process of providing company assets for a new hire.
Check the approval status of a training budget request.

She accesses the Employee Navigator chat via Microsoft Teams and quickly completes both action items, keeping her momentum in the workday by handling workplace tasks directly from the interface that she uses every day.

Supported use cases

The Microsoft Teams integration supports the following use cases for Employee Navigator:

Get the targeted answers for workplace queries.
Use text and image input.
Search for knowledge articles, service requests, approvals, To-dos, and service health items.
Get the option to click the link and open the form.
Request conversational walkthrough(form-filling via chat).
Update a service request by adding comments or canceling.
Manage approvals.
Summarize AI responses and comments added by support staff.
Provide thumbs up/thumbs down feedback on AI responses.
Add attachments to questions in the chat.
Add image attachments in comments.
Add Rich Text-formatted comments.
Connect with a live agent as a fallback option.

Limitations

In the Microsoft Teams interface, responses from Employee Navigator are not presented in a table format. They are displayed as a bulleted list with relevant inline links. The key details provided are consistent with those delivered in the native BMC Helix Digital Workplace end-user console.
The following use cases are not supported in Employee Navigator chat via Microsoft Teams:
- Voice input types
- Welcome message
Comments cannot be added or shown from fulfillment type requests, such as INC, WO, and CRQ types, in the Employee Navigator Supervisor agent.
Trying to add a very long comment via Microsoft Teams may fail due to LLM token limits.
For adding RTF comments via Microsoft Teams, only RTF elements supported in native BMC Helix Digital Workplace are supported in Microsoft Teams, such as Bold, Italic, and Underline. Complex formats, such as tables, code blocks, or code snippets, are not supported and are parsed as plain text in BMC Helix Digital Workplace.
Images included in the BMC Helix Digital Workplace comments are not rendered or supported for viewing RTF comments via Microsoft Teams.
Only 3 images can be added as part of a comment via Microsoft Teams.
When attaching as comments, images larger than 2MB are not supported. Large image files can cause Microsoft Teams to respond slowly or to not respond at all.
Only 10 images can be added to attachment-type questionnaires with a maximum image size of 5MB. See Microsoft Teams documentation for limits and specifications.
Only image formats PNG, GIF, JPG, and WEBP are supported for adding comments and for attachment question types.
For attachment-type questionnaires, uploading files is supported only when using the Microsoft Teams Attach file option under the + sign in the chat bar. Copying and pasting attachments in the chat is not supported.

Process overview

MS Teams GPT

Supported skill, agent, and models

The supported agent for the Microsoft Teams integration is Employee Navigator Supervisor - MS Teams. For more information, see Out-of-the-box skills in BMC Helix Digital Workplace.
To learn more about how Employee Navigator Supervisor agent works, see Configuring Employee Navigator Supervisor agent.
The supported models are Azure OpenAI - GPT-5.1, Azure OpenAI—GPT-4.1, Azure OpenAI—GPT-4.1 mini, and GCP Vertex—Gemini 2.5 Flash. For more information, see Models in BMC HelixGPT.

Important

Before making changes to any out-of-the-box configuration, you must copy the agent and then edit it. For more information about cloning an agent, see Creating and managing agents by using the Agent Studio wizard.

Task 1: To add Microsoft Teams as a communication channel

To integrate Microsoft Teams as a communication channel with the BMC application, see Adding Microsoft Teams as a communication channel.

Task 2: To configure the Employee Navigator agent in the Microsoft Teams chat

As an administrator, log in to the HelixGPT Agent Studio.
From the Applications list, select BMC Helix Digital Workplace.
Select a skill from either of the following options:
- You can select the out-of-the-box supported skill: Employee Navigator for Helix - MS Teams.
  The Employee Navigator Supervisor - MS Teams agent is configured out of the box for this skill.
- You can select a custom skill that you have created and proceed with the next steps.
  For more information about creating a custom skill, see Creating and managing skills.
Click the Channels tab.
Click Add Channel.
The Add Channel dialog box is displayed.
From the Channel list, select Microsoft Teams.
Click Add.
The Add Channel dialog box is displayed.

Set the appropriate values in the Add Channel dialog box:

Field name	Value
Name	Microsoft Teams
Description	Employee Navigator for Helix - MS Teams
Microsoft Bot ID	The bot ID of the bot you have configured in the Microsoft Developer Portal.
Microsoft App Password	Value of the Client secret field of the Bot you have configured in the Microsoft Developer Portal.
Webhook URL	The endpoint address you have configured in the Microsoft Developer Portal.

Click Save.

The following image shows the agent configuration interface:

Click here to view the agent configuration interface.

Click here to view the channel configuration interface.

Click here to view the interface of adding channel.

Result

The following image shows the Employee Navigator chat accessed through the Microsoft Teams interface:

MS Teams

Troubleshooting

The following section describes the steps you can perform if you encounter the following issues:

Issue	Steps to perform
Unable to add supported images as part of comments or questionnaires.	When you create a new skill in HelixGPT Studio, you must add "supportRichHTMLContent": true under the skill configuration. This property is added out-of-the-box (OOTB) in sample skills but must be manually added for new skills. It enables adding images and rich text-formatted (RTF) content to comments and attaching images to question types. To double-check your skill configuration and make sure this property exists: Log in to HelixGPT Agent Studio, select your application, and then select the skill. On the Configure tab, add "supportRichHTMLContent": true under the skill configuration if the value doesn't exist already.
Microsoft Teams GPT error: File upload failed. The file may be unsupported or there may be a temporary issue. Please try again.	If this error message is displayed after adding a file to a comment, run /clear on the chat conversation. This command clears the existing cache and chat history. Retry the request after the cache and chat history is cleared.

Issue

Steps to perform

Unable to add supported images as part of comments or questionnaires.

When you create a new skill in HelixGPT Studio, you must add "supportRichHTMLContent": true under the skill configuration. This property is added out-of-the-box (OOTB) in sample skills but must be manually added for new skills. It enables adding images and rich text-formatted (RTF) content to comments and attaching images to question types.

To double-check your skill configuration and make sure this property exists:

Log in to HelixGPT Agent Studio, select your application, and then select the skill.
On the Configure tab, add "supportRichHTMLContent": true under the skill configuration if the value doesn't exist already.

Microsoft Teams GPT error: File upload failed. The file may be unsupported or there may be a temporary issue. Please try again.

If this error message is displayed after adding a file to a comment, run /clear on the chat conversation. This command clears the existing cache and chat history. Retry the request after the cache and chat history is cleared.