Launching Ops Swarmer for collaboration

You can launch a Microsoft Teams chat from an incident screen by using the BMC Helix Ops Swarmer agent. The BMC Helix Ops Swarmer agent is used to start a Microsoft Teams chat, collaborate, find incident-related information, and resolve the incident. If BMC Helix ITSM is integrated with BMC Helix AIOps, you can get situation details, and other BMC Helix AIOps-related information.

When you launch a chat from an incident screen, the incident assignee is automatically added to the chat. If the incident is a major incident, the Major Incident Manager and Change Coordinator are also automatically added. You can also add more team members to the chat.

A user with edit access to the incident, and who is part of the existing member list for the chat, can add members to the chat in Microsoft Teams. A user with edit access, but not part of the chat, can request to be added to the Ops Swarmer chat.

The Launch ChatOps option is renamed to Start Ops Swarmer. With the Start Ops Swarmer button, you can start a chat in Microsoft Teams. You get an improved experience with additional capabilities with Ops Swarmer.

Information that you can get for incidents in the Microsoft Teams chat

You can perform the following actions and get information about incidents in the Microsoft Teams chat:

• View incident summaries, add and view work notes for incidents, receive chat summaries, and access participant timelines for incidents.
  Important: You must have the appropriate permission to add work notes to an incident.​​​​​​
• Search for incidents by specifying partial numbers. For example, specify "23" instead of "IN00000023".
• Get information from custom fields if they are added to the information details displayed in the chat.
• Get information from the HPD:Association form for the incident, or a field pointing to an external third-party incident.
• Get participant recommendations for incidents that you are currently collaborating on. The recommendation is provided based on the assignees of similar incidents.
• Get participant recommendations for users or groups who are added as "Managed by" for any services or CIs related to the incident.
• Get participant recommendation for Change Manager or Change Coordinator if the incident is created from a situation that is related to a change request. 
• If XMatter or PagerDuty is configured, based on the incident support group, get the on-call person for the support group and provide the recommendation.
• If BMC Helix ITSM is integrated with BMC Helix AIOps, get Situation details from BMC Helix AIOps.

Scenario

Before you begin

To launch the BMC Helix Ops Swarmer agent to start a Microsoft Teams chat, the following prerequisites must be completed:

• Configuring a Microsoft Teams bot and publishing an application in the Microsoft Azure Portal
• Configuring Microsoft Teams bot in BMC Helix ITSM for streamlining incidents
• View and edit access to an incident to launch or request to join Ops Swarmer.

To start a Microsoft Teams chat from an incident

An incident assignee, major incident manager, or communication coordinator can start the Microsoft Teams chat. They are automatically added to the chat.

1. From the ticket console, open an incident.
2. On the incident details page, click Start Ops Swarmer.
   
3. In the Start Ops Swarmer window, add members that you want to include in the Microsoft Teams chat, and click Create.
   A chat is automatically created when three or more members are added to the chat. Otherwise, the Microsoft Teams chat opens. The Start Ops Swarmer window automatically changes to Launch Ops Swarmer.
4. To start chatting with the members in Microsoft Teams, click Launch Ops Swarmer.
   
5. In the Launch Ops Swarmer window, add members that you want to include in the chat, and click Launch.
   

The Microsoft Teams chat opens, and you can start collaborating with the chat members to resolve the incident.

To request to join an Ops Swarmer chat

If you have edit access to an incident, and want to join an Ops Swarmer chat, you can request to be added to the chat. When you send the request, a member of the chat must manually add you to the chat group.

1. From the ticket console, open an incident.
2. On the incident details page, click Request Ops Swarmer.
   
   A notification is displayed in the Microsoft Teams chat about your request. After your request is approved, the button name changes to Launch Ops Swarmer.
3. On the incidents details page, click Launch Ops Swarmer.
   The Microsoft Teams chat opens, and you can start collaborating with the chat members to resolve the incident.