Office 365/Microsoft teams alert channel

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To send alert notifications from Instana to Office 365 or Microsoft teams, create an alert channel.

Alert notifications are sent to Office 365 or Microsoft teams in real time by using Workflows or Incoming Webhooks.

Prerequisites

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Before you begin ensure that you have a workflow or webhook URL for connecting to Office 365 or Microsoft Teams.

Important: Office 365 connectors deprecation: With the Retirement of Office 365 connectors within Microsoft Teams, the ability to create new connectors will be blocked after August 15, 2024. Existing webhooks are supported until Microsoft removes them completely. Refer to the following instructions to migrate to workflows at the earliest.

Steps for migrating to workflows: In order to migrate from existing alert channels that uses a webhook URL, replace your Workflow / Webhook URL field on the UI with a valid workflow URL. Complete the following Getting a workflow or webhook URL procedure to create the workflow URLs for your channel.

Note: There are design changes to the alerts received through workflows as they use AdaptiveCard template. Existing alert channels that use an incoming webhook URL follow the old design using the MessageCard template. For more information about the design changes, see Alerting Examples.

Getting a workflow or webhook URL

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Workflows: Follow the instructions from Microsoft to create a workflow by using the template Post to a channel when a webhook request is received.

Validate the permission settings that are necessary for the Microsoft Teams channels.
  1. Public channel: If channel moderation is enabled, make sure to select the Allow bots to submit channel messages permission in the Microsoft Teams channel settings.
  2. Private channel: By default, workflow bots do not support posting to private channels. As a workaround, modify the workflow to post as a user.

Incoming webhooks: New incoming webhook connectors cannot be created in Microsoft Teams after 15 August 2024. To migrate from existing incoming webhooks to workflows, follow the steps under the Workflows section and update the Instana alert channel webhook URL to the workflow URL

To set up an Incoming Webhook for the Office 365 or Microsoft Teams alert channel integration, see Post external requests to Teams with Incoming Webhook.

Creating an Office 365 or Microsoft Teams alert channel

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Use the Instana UI to set up your alert channel:

  1. From the main navigation, click Settings > Global settings.
  2. Within the section Events & alerts, click Alert channels.
  3. Click Add alert channel.
  4. Within the Add an alert channel window, select Office 365 / Microsoft Teams from the list of available Unidirectional channels. Then, click Add alert channel.
  5. Configure your alert channel settings:
    • Name : Enter a unique name for identifying the channel.
    • Workflow / Webhook URL: Enter the URL for workflow or webhook that is set up for sending the alert notifications.
    • You can click Test channel to test whether the configured channel settings are valid and can receive a test notification.
    • Teams: You can optionally tag the channel so that members of the specified team, or teams, can more easily find the channel in the UI.

    Office 365 / Microsoft Teams alert channel

  6. (Optional) Expand the Advanced section to customize notifications:
    • - Add timezone: Set a specific time zone to ensure that recipients view messages in the their local time instead of the default UTC time.
      Figure 1. Add time zone
      Add time zone

      To add a time zone, click Add timezone. Then, select the preferred time zone for the alert notifications.

Alerting examples

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After you create the alert channel, Instana sends alerts for events as an HTTP POST to the configured Office 365 or Microsoft Teams Workflow or Webhook URL (HTTP or HTTPS), which is the address that the alerts are sent to.