The following setup guide will walk you through distributing Tikit VIrtual Agent (TVA) to your Teams users. From a high level, you will be publishing the Tikit Virtual Agent custom app to your organization’s app catalog (see Manage your apps in the Microsoft Teams admin center). Next we’ll be creating policies to control access to the app (see Manage app permission policies in Microsoft Teams) as well as pinning and installing Tikit Virtual Agent for users (see Manage custom app policies and settings). Finally, we’ll go through the process of assigning our new policies to users to grant them permissions and start distributing Tikit Virtual Agent .
To make the Tikit Virtual Agent app available to users from your organization’s Teams app store, you can either automatically install Tikit Virtual Agent from the Tikit web app or manually publish the Tikit Virtual Agent app package. We’ve detailed the steps for both paths below.
After publishing to your organization’s app store, you can create app permission and setup policies to control access to Tikit Virtual Agent and pin and install Tikit Virtual Agent for your users.
To install the Tikit Virtual Agent to your organization’s app store in Teams:
- In the Microsoft Teams admin center, open Manage Apps then search for and select the Tikit Virtual Agent app.
- After you have selected Tikit Virtual Agent, click on Allow to change the status of Tikit Virtual Agent to Allowed.
The Tikit Virtual Agent has successfully been allowed in your Microsoft teams app store and is ready for your users to install. Teams admins can also deploy Virtual Agent to users via a Setup Policy, and also pin Virtual Agent to your users sidebar! Check out the sections below on managing app permission policies and app setup policies.
App permissions policies control what apps are available to a user within the Teams app. You can allow or block all apps or specific apps published by Microsoft, third-parties, and your organization (custom apps). You can use the Global (Org-wide default) policy to customize permissions for all users at once or you can create custom permission policies and assign them to a set of users. By default, all users in your organization can access the Tikit Virtual Agent app in your organization’s app store. To restrict and control who has permission to use Tikit Virtual Agent, we will be creating an app permission policy. To learn more, see Manage app permission policies in Microsoft Teams.
In the next steps we will be updating the Global (Org-wide default) app permission policy to allow default access to Tikit Virtual Agent for all users.
- Open Microsoft Teams Admin Center
- Navigate to Teams Apps –> Permission policies
- Verify that Third-party apps is set to Allow all apps
- If Allow all apps is not selected, please make sure either Allow specific apps and block all others is selected and add Tikit Virtual Agent, or Block specific apps and allow all others is selected and Tikit Virtual Agent is not blocked.
In the next steps we will be updating the Global app permission policy to remove the default access to Tikit Virtual Agent and creating a new app permission policy to restrict access to specific users.
- Sign in to the Microsoft Teams admin center.
- In the left navigation, go to Teams apps > Permission policies.
- Select the Global (Org-wide default) policy.
- Under Third-party apps, select Block all apps. If there are other Thrid-party apps in your organization’s app store you may want to change this to to Allow specific apps and block all others to better match your permission requirements.
- Click Save to save the app permission policy.
The following steps will create a third-party Tikit Virtual Agent permission policy:
- Sign in to the Microsoft Teams admin center.
- In the left navigation, go to Teams apps > Permission policies.
- Click Add.
- Enter a name and description.
- Leave Microsoft apps and Custom apps as the default Allow all apps, unless your organization has specific permission requirements for those categories.
- Under Third-party apps, select Allow specific apps and block all others.
- Click Add apps.
- In the Add third-party apps pane, search for Tikit Virtual Agent, and then select Allow.
- Click Save to save the app permission policy.
We now have a third-party app permission policy to control access to Tikit Virtual Agent.
Users who have permissions to Tikit Virtual Agent can find it in your organization’s app store under Built for Your Organization Name on the Apps page in Teams. To make it easy for users to get the app, you can setup a policy to deploy to specified users and pin the app to the app bar in teams. To do this, we will create an app setup policy.
- Sign in to the Microsoft Teams admin center.
- In the left navigation, go to Teams apps > Setup policies.
- Click Add.
- Enter a name and description.
- Optionally turn on or off Upload custom apps and Allow user pinning.
- To install Tikit Virtual Agent:
- Under Installed apps, click Add apps.
- In the Add installed apps pane, search for Tikit Virtual Agent, and then select Add.
- To pin Tikit Virtual Agent:
- Under Pinned apps, click Add apps.
- In the Add pinned apps pane, search for Tikit Virtual Agent, and then select Add.
- Arrange the apps in the order you want them to appear in Teams.
- Click Save to save the app setup policy.
We now have an app setup policy for Tikit Virtual Agent. In combination with the app permission policy we can now control access and easily pin and install Tikit Virtual Agent by assigning the policies to users next.
You can assign the specific app setup or app permissions policies to users directly from the App setup policies or App permission policies pages or in bulk via the Users page. We recommend the Users page to assign both policy types at once for multiple users to make the process a bit simpler, but we do also include the steps for assigning just the app setup or permissions policies:
The easiest path to assigning app setup and app permissions policies to users at once is via the Users page in the Teams admin center:
- Sign in to the Microsoft Teams admin center.
- In the left navigation, go to Manage Users.
- Select users to assign policy and click Edit Settings.
- In the Edit settings pane, select the Tikit Virtual Agent app setup and app permissions policies. If you did not create an app permission policy for Tikit Virtual Agent, feel free to keep the existing app permission policy.
- Click Apply.
To assign an app setup policy to a user from the App permission policies page:
- Sign in to the Microsoft Teams admin center.
- In the left navigation, go to Teams apps > Permission policies.
- Select the Tikit Virtual Agent policy and click Manage Users – Assign Users.
- In the Manage Users pane, search for user by display name or by user name, and then click Add.
- When you’re finished with the list of users to add, click Apply.
To assign an app setup policy to a user from the App setup policies page:
- Sign in to the Microsoft Teams admin center.
- In the left navigation, go to Teams apps > Setup policies.
- Select the Tikit Virtual Agent policy and click Manage Users – Assign Users.
- In the Manage Users pane, search for user by display name or by user name, and then click Add.
- When you’re finished with the list of users to add, click Apply.
To assign an app setup policy to a user from the App setup policies page:
- Sign in to the Microsoft Teams admin center.
- In the left navigation, go to Teams apps > Setup policies.
- Select Group policy assignment and select + Add.
- In the Assign policy to Group pane, select an Azure group and select the Tikit Virtual Agent policy.
- When you’re finished, click Apply.
Admins to customize the Tikit Virtual Agent app to enhance appearance and adhere to the organization’s branding. Teams admin can update the app properties based on the organizational needs in the Manage Apps page in Teams admin center. You may refer to Customize appearance of apps in your organization’s Teams store to know the details of which properties you can customize.
To customize the Tikit VIrtual Agent from the Manage Apps page:
- Sign in to the Microsoft Teams admin center.
- In the left navigation, go to Teams apps > Manage Apps.
- Select and click the Tikit Virtual Agent from the list
- In the Tikit Virtual Agent manage page, click on the pencil icon to open the Customize pane
- In the Customize pane, change up the details as needed
- When you’re finished with changes, click Apply.
