Receive Microsoft 365 status updates right in Microsoft Teams with AtBot
Microsoft Teams recently deprecated its Twitter connector. That’s notable because Twitter is one of the best sources for updates on the status of Microsoft 365, Office 365, and the suite of software associated with this ecosystem.
I’ve published a lot of recommendations on how to stay up to date with the continual changes that occur within the Office 365 cloud. Admittedly, it’s not easy. Twitter remains one of the most reactive and trustworthy sources in my opinion.
And likely one of the best accounts to follow is MSFT365Status. I regularly recommend following this account because in many cases, it provides updates on service outages before you ever see a message in the Office 365 Admin Message Center (and it’s public). For example, the Microsoft Teams outage that occurred in February was, in my opinion, best documented by this account.
But why go to Twitter to follow along? We can use some Microsoft technologies to automatically bring this information right into Teams. And thanks to AtBot, you can do it for free.
For this solution, you’ll need AtBot from the Microsoft Teams store installed in Teams or you’ll need to be on an AtBot Premium plan with a custom bot that you want to be available to forward these messages.
Next, hop over to Microsoft Power Automate (the artist formerly known as Microsoft Flow); you can simply browse to office.com then click Power Automate in the app launcher.
Recreate the flow shown below. You’ll need to sign in to Twitter using your account if you don’t already have the Twitter connector set up in Power Automate. You decide what the trigger condition is; in this screenshot, I went with something generalized, using #Office365 as the trigger. But you likely will get inundated with posts, so use something a bit more specific (like from:@MSFT365Status, etc.).
The beauty of this flow is you can provide multiple conditions for the trigger. If you want to follow specific hashtags, other accounts, etc., you can include multiple conditions which effectively act as an OR condition.
Moving forward, whenever these trigger conditions are met, your bot will drop the message in your Teams Channel and you’ll be able to stay up to date on status and more of Office 365, right in your hub for work, Microsoft Teams.
Now take this to the next level: don’t just use this simple workflow as the only thing AtBot can do. You can give AtBot other Skills, like being able to add tasks to Planner or answering knowledgeable questions with QnA Maker. There’s so much opportunity that you’ll regret not taking the next steps!
AtBot brings AI within reach
AtBot is the premiere bot-as-a-service solution for the Microsoft cloud. Built completely within Azure, AtBot is your out-of-the-box, easy-to-configure bot for Teams, SharePoint, or the web. Teach AtBot tasks using Power Automate, make him your corporate source of knowledge with QnA Maker, help him understand almost anything your colleagues could ask thanks to LUIS, and manage his features with the AtBot Admin Portal. Get going with AtBot Free or start your free trial of AtBot Premium today.
