Microsoft Teams

Microsoft Teams is how a running workflow talks to people. An agent can post a card that asks a question, wait for the answer, and then continue.

Teams is the only chat service Anthara works with. There is no Slack integration.

Anthara uses two separate things in Teams:

	Teams bot	Teams connection
What it is	A bot registered for the whole deployment	Your own sign-in to Microsoft
Who sets it up	Whoever installs Anthara	Each person, on the Connections page
Used for	Posting cards to a channel and receiving the answers	Sending chat messages as you, and proving who you are on approval cards

The Teams bot

The bot is configured when Anthara is installed, with these settings:

Setting	Meaning
TEAMS_BOT_APP_ID	The bot’s application ID.
TEAMS_BOT_TENANT_ID	The Microsoft tenant the bot belongs to.
TEAMS_BOT_APP_PASSWORD	The bot’s client secret.

Teams sends card answers to the API route /teams/webhook. On a standard install the address is https://<your-domain>/api/teams/webhook. Set it as the bot’s messaging endpoint.

The Teams connection

A connection is your own sign-in to Microsoft through an OAuth app. To create one, see Connections.

Anthara asks Microsoft for these permissions:

Permission	Why
openid, profile, User.Read	Identify you.
Team.ReadBasic.All, Channel.ReadBasic.All	List your teams and channels.
ChatMessage.Send, Chat.ReadWrite	Send and read chat messages.
Files.ReadWrite.All	Read and write files.
OnlineMeetings.Read, OnlineMeetingTranscript.Read.All	Read meetings and their transcripts.
offline_access	Stay connected without asking you to sign in again.

In a workflow, a connection named Microsoft Teams reaches the agent as the environment variable MICROSOFT_TEAMS_ACCESS_TOKEN.

Ask a question with a card

Mark an ai_task step as interactive. The agent can then post a card and wait.

- name: confirm-scope
  type: ai_task
  config:
    interactive: true
    teams_channel_id: '19:replace-with-your-channel-id@thread.v2'
    teams_service_url: 'https://smba.trafficmanager.net/teams/'
    prompt: |
      Ask the team whether story {{inputs.issueKey}} is in scope for this sprint.
      Use the ask_with_card tool. Wait for the answer, then report it.

Key	Meaning
interactive	Set to true to give the agent the card tools.
teams_channel_id	The Teams channel that receives the card.
teams_service_url	The Bot Framework service address for your Teams region.
card_title, card_description	Optional. Text shown for the card in the run view.

An interactive agent has two card tools:

Tool	What it does
ask_with_card	Posts a card with one to five questions and waits for the answer. A question is a choice list or a free-text box.
notify_card	Posts a card with a title and a description. It asks nothing and does not wait.

What happens while a card waits

1. The agent calls ask_with_card. The card appears in the channel with a Submit Response button.
2. The worker saves its session and stops. The run shows the status Collaboration Loop.
3. Someone answers the card. The card is updated in place.
4. Anthara starts a new worker. It continues the same session with the answers.

A waiting run uses no worker. A scheduled workflow keeps starting new runs while an older run waits on a card.

If the agent finishes a turn after an answer without posting another card, Anthara posts a recovery card that offers to retry or stop.

Who can answer

Card	Who can answer	Time limit
A card from ask_with_card	Anyone who can see the card in the channel. The first answer is used.	None
A fix-approval card	An Anthara admin who has connected Microsoft Teams on the Connections page	24 hours

A fix-approval card comes from a step that sets review_fixes: true. It asks an admin to approve changes to your AI Coding Standards. Anthara checks who clicked, and refuses anyone who is not a connected admin.

Check your deployment

For ordinary cards, Anthara’s default is to log a Teams request that fails verification and still process it. Setting TEAMS_AUTH_MODE=enforce on the API makes Anthara refuse those requests. Fix-approval cards are always verified.

Send a chat message

A send_message step with the microsoft_teams provider posts a message to a Teams chat. It posts as the person whose connection the run uses.

- name: tell-the-team
  type: send_message
  provider: microsoft_teams
  connection: Microsoft Teams
  config:
    chatId: '19:replace-with-your-chat-id@thread.v2'
    message: 'The nightly readiness check finished.'

config.chatId is required.

For more on cards, see Teams cards.