User guide

General Info

Each project administration section gets a new menu after add-on installation.

(Project settings → MS Teams Settings)

Connector has 2 modes based on their functionality:

Events - sends notifications to MS Teams channel triggered by events in Jira.

Reports - sends scheduled reports on issues

Project administrator can easily switch between modes by clicking on the corresponding button:

Open

Open

Personal configuration access:

Events mode

Here project administrators have the ability to set up connection between current Jira project and required MS Teams channel.

Each project can have limitless number of configurations for MS Teams channels. To create a new setting, find “New Setting” and fill in the required information.

There are 3 main blocks in any configuration tab:

1. Webhook URL

2. Filter

3. Events

Channel

Even though “Channel" block is not marked out, it contains the basic fields for settings creation:

Title* - is the field containing the name of the setting. Value is also used as setting tab header.

Webhook URL* - field for the link to MS Teams channel.

Requirements:

* - field marked as mandatory

To find out if the link is correct use "Test connection" button. If you see test notification in your channel, the link is correct.

Filter

By default if any selected event (see Events section below) takes place in any issue in project - a notification will be immediately sent to MS Teams channel (or sends Reports based on the corresponding settings). If you want to limit the number of monitored issues, 2 modes of filtering are available: Basic and Advanced.

You can switch between filtering modes by clicking on the corresponding toggle. Note that only one filtering mode can exist at a time.

Label next to the toggle element will give a hint on what filter mode is configured for current setting.

Filter update will take effect immediately after saving settings and will erase another filter mode if configured.

Basic filter mode is designed to help user build own filter like a constructor.

To start building own filter click on “Add filter“ select list to select required field as criteria. You can filter issues both by system field values like “Reporter”, “Summary” or by your custom field values.

After selecting the required field, it will be displayed for further data input. You can add several values into one field for filter to work by “any of” principle.

For example:

Selecting several priorities will trigger event notification in issues with both "Medium" and "High" priority.

If user selected several fields as filter criteria only those issues will trigger notifications that match at least one value for both fields.

For example:

Issue with "High" priority in status "Open" will trigger notification.

Issue with "High" priority in status “Closed" will not trigger notification.

Advanced filter mode is based on JQL expressions and has wider range of filtering possibilities unlike the basic mode.

Author

As administrator you can narrow down notification on events depending on who is their author. i.e. Who performed the action from the selected events list (see Events section below).

For example you can set up notifications to be sent only if they are performed by some core users (like managers or team leads) or a specific team. This can be done by defining specific users or via user groups.

Or you can exclude notifications of events performed by specific users simply mentioning them in the field “Exclude users”.

Events

In order to get notifications, you must define which of them you are interested in. Possible events are listed and grouped according to their common area of effect: comment, issue, worklog or versions.

If any of the event takes place in issues in the configured filter, a notification will be sent to MS Teams channel.

You can enable the whole event group turning on the toggle element next to it or pick each event individually.

Event notifications can work in 2 modes: 

1. Instant

2. Batch

In Instant mode, notifications are sent to channel the same moment event takes place in Jira. While in Batch mode notifications are stacked until the set up schedule condition is met. Once the time is up, notifications are sent in an organised manner. 

Extra fields

Each card has its own set of fields, yet for some events you can set up additional fields to display in the cards sent to MS Teams channel.

You can see an icon next to some events, clicking on which would open a drop down list of fields. Search and select the field which value you want to be displayed in the card sent to MS Teams channel.

After all settings have been set, save them to apply changes. As soon as they are saved, notification will start reaching your channel.

Reports mode

This mode allows administrators to send scheduled reports to MS Teams channel.

To to set up a report project administrator must take 3 simple steps:

1. Select Report Type

2. Configure issue filter

3. Set up the schedule

I. Report type

You can select report’s owner. Each report must have an owner as his/her permissions will be counted while building report. i.e. if report owner has no permission to view the issue it will not be included into the report.

If no owner is set - current user will be set as report owner.

II. Filter

Issue Filter functionality is identical to the one in the Events, but relates to Reports only.

Please see instructions here.

III. Schedule

This section is designed to create schedule when reports are to be sent to the MS Teams channel.

First, pick the period of the report schedule. Then fill in the additional fields depending on the selected period.

Each period has a different set of fields that help to adjust the correct time for sending report. You can see the fields corresponding to each of the periods below:

While period types like Daily, Weekly and Monthly send reports only once in a specified day and time, the "Once in" type lets you get reports more frequently and within a range of days and time.

Microsoft Teams is a separate service and there is a risk some notifications may be lost due to poor internet connection or rejected by Microsoft Teams itself.

Jira administrators can keep track of these possibilities and not only via Audit Log page in Manage apps section. All errors and major events related to connector configuration can be met there for further investigation.

Please note that logs are automatically cleared once a month, only leaving information about previous month’s events. All older events will be gone.