Sisense Analytics for Microsoft Teams

Setup and Configuration

Roles and Responsibilities

To complete setup and configuration, you will need:

Review the documentation and ensure that you have a Sisense Admin involved in this process, as well as whatever roles are required within your organization to complete these steps.

Creating a Teams App

  1. Visit https://dev.teams.microsoft.com/.

  2. Click Apps.

  3. Click New app.

  4. Name your application.

  5. In Sisense, copy and paste your application name into the corresponding field in the App Configuration > Infusion page.

  6. In the Developer Portal, click Configure > Basic Information.

  7. Copy and paste the App ID into the corresponding field in the App Configuration > Infusion page.

  8. Provide a short description, and a long description for your app.

  9. Provide URLs for your organization’s:

    • Terms of Use and paste it in the Terms of use field.

    • Privacy Policy and paste it in the Privacy policy field.

    • Developer or company name and paste it on the Developer or company name field.

    • Website and paste it in the Website field.

Creating a Teams Bot

  1. Under Configure, select App Features.

  2. Select Bot.

  3. Click the Create a new bot link.

  4. Click + New Bot.

  5. Type the Bot name into the field.

  6. Click Save.

  1. In the "Bot endpoint address" field, replace <sisense_url> with your Sisense instance URL, as follows: <sisense_url>/api/v1/infusion/teams/messages.

<sisense_url>/api/v1/infusion/teams/messages → https://mycompany.sisense.com/api/v1/infusion/teams/messages

  1. Click Save.

  2. Use the URL to locate your Bot ID.

  3. Copy and paste the Bot ID into the corresponding field in the App Configuration > Infusion page.

The Bot ID can be found in the URL as shown here:

Generating a Client Secret

  1. Click Client secrets.

  2. Click Add a client secret for your bot.

  3. Copy and paste the Client Secret into the Bot Password field in the App Configuration > Infusion page.

  4. See How to Create Client Secret for your Microsoft Teams Infusion App for detailed step-by-step instructions.

Adding Bot to App and Adding Scopes

  1. In the left sidebar, click Apps.

  2. Navigate to Configure > App Features.

  3. Select your newly created bot from the Select an existing bot drop-down.

  4. Scroll down and select the following scopes:

  • Personal

  • Group Chat

Note: Do not select "Team" as a scope option, as this is not a supported scope.

Generating a Manifest

A Microsoft Teams manifest file can be downloaded from Admin > Infusion > Sisense Analytics for Microsoft Teams. The zip file will include three files: manifest.json, LOGO-32.png, and LOGO-192.png.

Once you have downloaded the manifest:

  1. Replace <APP-ID> with the App ID.

  2. Replace <BOT-ID> with the Bot ID.

Generating a Manifest for a Sisense-branded Teams Bot

The App ID and Bot ID are the only fields that you are permitted to change. All other fields must remain unchanged.

Generating a Manifest for a White Labeled Teams Bot

If your sales order for Infusion Apps includes "white labeling" in the Product table, you are permitted to update the “versionNumber” and make changes to the following fields in the manifest file circled in red in the image below. Otherwise, you are not permitted to make any changes to the content of the manifest file.

If you are unsure if your sales order includes "white labeling" in the Product table, contact your Customer Success Manager.

Replacing Manifest Fields

If white labeling, you should change fields in the manifest so that your app/bot displays the correct information and appearance.

  • id

  • botId

  • packageName

  • developer

    • name

    • websiteUrl

    • privacyUrl

  • name

    • short

    • full

  • description

    • short

    • full

  • icons

    • outline

    • color

Replacing Icons

If icons are not replaced, the app will display Sisense logos. To replace icons as they appear in Microsoft Teams, after unzipping the downloaded file:

  1. Replace the LOGO-32.png and LOGO-192.png images with your images.

  2. Create a new ZIP file. It should contain only 3 files (no folders): manifest.json, LOGO-32.png, and LOGO-192.png (double-check that they are your images - not Sisense).

For Microsoft Teams icon size and layout requirements, see the app icon requirements here.

Installation and Access

Installing and Distributing

Note: Do not submit the application to the Microsoft AppSource Catalog.

It is recommended that Sisense Analytics for Microsoft Teams should be published as a custom app by uploading an app package (in .zip format). When uploading the zip file, there should be only 3 files in the zip, with no directories.

Custom Teams apps are available to users in your organization's app store. These steps should be performed by a Microsoft Global Admin.

When publishing Sisense Analytics for Microsoft Teams, it is highly recommended to use a single version of the application manifest file at a time.

Deploying multiple versions with unique IDs will result in multiple applications in Teams. It is recommended that when a new version is deployed, the old version is removed. Removing the old version will not impact users.

When deploying updates to the application manifest file, you must bump the version in order to trigger an update. Uploading the application manifest with a version bump will trigger an update. Application manifest files with the same Version, and same ID Microsoft will not recognize it as a “new” app and will skip it.

Users Getting Access

Teams users can add Sisense Analytics for Microsoft Teams to their individual accounts:

  1. In the Teams Sidebar, click the Apps icon.

  2. Click Built for your org.

  3. Click the app tile.

Once Sisense Analytics for Microsoft Teams is available in your sidebar, you can log in to begin:

  1. Type Login.

  2. Provide the email address and password associated with your Sisense account.

  3. Click Connect.

All Infusion Apps support Single Sign On (SSO), and will respect the SSO settings/configurations on your instance. Some instances may not require users to provide an email and password if already logged in via SSO. Learn more about Single Sign On here.

To log out of Sisense Analytics for Microsoft Teams, type the word Logout and follow the confirmation prompt. There is no forced logout, so users can stay logged in indefinitely while still logged in to Teams.

Using Sisense Analytics for Microsoft Teams

Asking Questions

Sisense Analytics for Microsoft Teams uses “Ask Me” to take questions submitted by a user, query data within Sisense, and return an understandable, friendly response. Using natural language makes asking questions of data more approachable to less technical business users.

Microsoft Teams is best used to perform small, ad-hoc queries as opposed to deep or complex data analysis.

Users should start by understanding which Views are available to them, in order to know what kinds of questions they can ask. Using the command/word show views, Microsoft Teams will display a list of Views and their descriptions.

The columns and filters displayed are intended to help users understand what data is included in the View, that they can ask questions about, and how to ask their questions. Ask Me requires that users follow some syntactical rules when asking questions.

In Microsoft Teams, responses to questions are returned in a list format, but can be viewed as a visualization when aggregated. The data displayed in the list output corresponds to how the columns are configured within the View.

Availability of Data

Data coming from an ElastiCube will refresh based on the build schedule of the cube. Data coming from a Live model will refresh with new data each time the user queries a View.

This means that depending on the build schedule or how often the data in your live model is changing, and how often you are querying data, you may not see changes in the data that you expect to see.

If you expect to see changes in data, but are not seeing them, contact your administrator.

Saving Questions for Repeated Use

In some cases, users may ask similar, or even the same, questions over and over again.

A query can be saved as a Bookmark and referenced at any time by entering the command show <bookmark name>. All Bookmarks can be viewed by typing show bookmarks. Bookmarks are saved for each user, but questions can be shared and then bookmarked by others.

See Using Bookmarks for more information about creating and managing Bookmarks.

Exploring Aggregated Data

Aggregating the results

Views, Bookmarks, and Questions can be aggregated in order to see results in a different way. Using the Analyze function provides a summary and a visualization of the data. Aggregation can be performed by asking a question and clicking Analyze or prepending a question with the command analyze <View name> or <Bookmark name>.

Analyze will return two components: a Summary and a visualization.

In order for the Summary to return accurate results, Analyze requires the definition of a Unique Identifier and a Default Measure when creating the View. View Creators can add additional configurations such as aggregations and date filters in order to enrich the results. To ensure the Analyze and Summary feature works properly for users, see Creating & Configuring Views.

Summary

The Summary presents a summary of data within the View, Question, or Bookmark. The Summary may include some or all of the following, depending on the configuration of the View and the question being asked:

  • Distinct Count

  • Aggregations

  • Range of Minimum and Maximum

  • A past period and year-over-year

Visualizations

Accompanying the Summary, visualizations are generated and displayed natively in Teams. Visualizations are interactive and allow you to dynamically change the measures and dimensions displayed on the x- and y- axes.

  Definition Example
Measure A field that contains quantitative values that you can measure Numeric data
Dimension A field that contains qualitative values Names, Dates, or Geographic data

The chart provides the top 10 results, broken down based on the selections in the drop-downs. You can select a measure or dimension other than that which was originally shown. The options displayed in the drop-downs are determined by the View’s configuration.

Depending on the dimensions selected, the visualization is displayed as a bar chart or a time series chart.

Sharing your insights with others

You can share your insights with others by clicking Share at the bottom of each result set.

The results of a question can be shared with one more users or channels, and must include a message from the sender. The recipient must have Sisense Analytics for Microsoft Teams installed in order to receive the message. Messages will be sent and received within the Sisense Analytics app.

Note: Sharing aggregated results is not currently supported.

Troubleshooting

  • If you believe your Summary is not reporting properly or missing information, contact your View creator.

  • Infusion App installations occur outside of the Sisense instance. Sisense Support does not assist with client installation of Infusion Apps. If you need additional assistance, open a ticket with Microsoft Teams Support or refer to Microsoft Teams Documentation.