Let’s pretend for a moment that you’re a Salesforce Admin and your company has decided that they’ve fully bought into the Microsoft ecosystem. Part of that ecosystem, of course, includes Microsoft Teams. This means that you aren’t benefiting from Salesforce’s acquisition of Slack and their ever-tightening integration features like sending notifications from Salesforce to Slack.
This wouldn’t have been a problem five years ago when email was a perfectly acceptable way to send important information to a group of colleagues. But now, email is a, well, messy place and, as a result, we’ve all started leaning on our messaging platforms for most of our important communications.
But wait – Salesforce has a Microsoft Teams app available! Team members can mention and interact with Salesforce records from within the Teams app, which is great for when you want to pull in an individual record in a conversation, but there’s no automation here at all.
So now you, as the Salesforce Admin, are handcuffed to a non-Salesforce-owned messaging platform. Luckily, we’ve felt that pain and decided to figure out how to fix it. Let’s dive into why we care to integrate notifications between Salesforce and Microsoft Teams, and then review some of the options available for making it happen.
Benefits of Integrating Salesforce and Microsoft Teams
Getting notifications in Microsoft Teams is timely, much more so than email. It allows us to have threaded conversations that can be easily followed and contributed to, thus reducing clutter in channels and keeping conversations more tightly contained. In addition, like your Slack-enabled counterparts, you would be able to:
- Receive real-time notifications about key Salesforce events and record changes.
- Easily keep everyone informed about important events, even those without Salesforce access.
- Avoid the distractions of endless email notifications (which, let’s be honest, are usually ignored).
Although Salesforce doesn’t natively support the connection, we’ve found three solutions that have various strengths and weaknesses. Below we’ll explore each one:
- Unofficialsf.com’s Teams Flow extension
- An AppExchange package by Cyfuno Labs
- Use an Integration Platform as a Service (iPaaS) platform (such as Power Automate)
1. Unofficialsf.com’s Teams Flow Extension
As a free resource, Unofficialsf.com is fantastic at providing extra capabilities within your Salesforce org. Their solution Use Flows to Post Messages to Microsoft Teams allows you to send a message into Microsoft Teams. Looking at the Source Code, it looks like they have also been experimenting with creating and deleting channels, and inviting and kicking users.
Installation requires three other packages to be installed first, which can be a bit heavy if you aren’t already using them. There are additional steps for setting up an app on the Microsoft side, with some guidance on using Postman to get an “access token”. This is then used inside Flow. According to the documentation, this access token needs to be manually refreshed every hour, though it looks like there may be a way to configure the token lifetime when you dig into the Microsoft Documentation.
While the configuration might be tough, using the solution is quite easy. From a Salesforce Flow, add the “Post Message to MS Team” action onto your canvas and configure just 5 values. It’s important to note that you will be working with Teams IDs quite a bit here.
The “teamId” and “channelId” values can be a bit tricky, as you need to use Teams to get a Channel Link, then decode it to end up with values similar to 19:c44259973e3a444abcd82aeb0d5b272f@thread.tacv2. The “token” value will come from your work in Postman.
This solution can be great for a technical team or a group of developers. The regular maintenance required may prevent admins from selecting this choice.
2. AppExchange Package for Teams Integration
There is an AppExchange package by Cyfuno Labs that makes it easy to send Salesforce Notifications into Microsoft Teams. It’s an on-platform solution (meaning no need for additional pieces), keeping the control and capabilities with the Salesforce Administrator.
A Setup Assistant guides you through each step of the installation with real-time checking for completion. There are no other dependencies required when installing this app, keeping it nice and lightweight.
After the guided install and setup, you have three options for sending notifications and actions to manage channels. On their website, Cyfuno Labs has a few two-minute demo videos showing use cases for creating notifications.
The package also allows you to create, add members to, and archive channels.
This package can be great when a Salesforce Administrator wants to keep control of when and how notifications are sent to Teams, allowing for quick adjustments when business requirements inevitably change.
In addition to sending notifications and working with channels, the package also provides a Lightning Web Component that can show the status of users within Microsoft Teams.
With robust documentation and many how-to videos, this solution covers all bases.
3. Use an iPaaS Platform
iPaaS solutions (such as Power Automate) offer a versatile and scalable approach to integrating Salesforce into Microsoft Teams. While the build and control are outside of the Salesforce platform, when organizations already use them it’s an ideal choice.
With any iPaaS platform, the steps would be relatively similar. Once connected to Salesforce, create an automation that’s triggered by a Salesforce action (such as a record change), followed by some decisions or conditions.
Once you’re ready to send the notification, add a Teams action to send the notification. While the input methods may vary, you’ll likely need to choose the Team and Channel to post the message, along with the message itself. Be sure to include merge variables to create a robust and helpful message.
Customize the notification message using values from the trigger and other actions as needed. Save the automation and test it out.
Summary
Integrating Salesforce with Microsoft Teams can significantly enhance your team’s communication and productivity. With all of these low-cost options, you can make sure that critical updates are sent in real time with a seamless workflow.
Each option offers unique advantages and levels of completeness (and complication). If you are looking to integrate Salesforce and Microsoft Teams, check out the AppExchange package by Cyfuno Labs, designed to focus on the administrative experience and deliver features that Salesforce doesn’t offer with Slack. The solution also includes a guided setup, which makes setup a breeze and allows you to start testing your use cases ASAP.
And, as of this writing, they’re offering a 14-day free trial, so now is a great time to try it out: get it from the AppExhange now!
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