Overview
Connecting AccountKit to Teams brings new levels of communication within your practice by pushing events and correspondence register entries to a channel of choice. Before you start, it's worth getting agreement within your business as to whether you want yet more information coming at you. It can be overwhelming, so we recommend only turning on a couple initially and confirm it's value and use within the organisation before rolling it through the different areas as they're made available in time.
New User Interface
Getting started...
Get Connected
Have a user with practice administrator user permissions enter Practice Settings
- Go to the Integrations tab
- Look under the "Communication Settings" heading
- Select the Connect Button within the Teams integration area
- Login with your normal Microsoft Credentials and 2FA if required.
- Review the permissions and press Accept.
- If you select the "Consent on behalf of your organisation", no other users will see this permissions box, they'll just have to login with their normal credentials.
- If you select the "Consent on behalf of your organisation", no other users will see this permissions box, they'll just have to login with their normal credentials.
- All users will now have received a notification at the top of the page letting them know that they can now authorise their own connections to Teams.
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If you don't have appropriate authority associated with your Microsoft Account, have a user with the appropriate administrator access for Microsoft make the initial connection to authorise AccountKit across the organisation. If you don't have authority, you'll end up a with a message something like this. |
User Connections.
Connecting 'My Profile' for all users
Now that you have connected Teams to your organisation you will need to also have each user access their profile and activate the connection at the user level. This is to ensure that user credentials that are in place between the practice and end users are maintained. For users to do this, they will need to head to their profile in AccountKit, click and then select 'My Profile'.
Once they have accessed their profile, they will to select 'Connect' on Teams under the Integrations section of their profile page.
Utilising the Teams Integration
Now that you have authorised Teams, you will notice that there are some new fields that will have appeared throughout AccountKit.
Correspondence Register
You will now be able to communicate with your team in response to various actions taken within the Correspondence Register. These include:
- On a correspondence item, you will now be able to designate how a user is notified.
- By utilising this, any correspondence (such as phone messages or meeting notes) will go to the applicable channel. By default, it will go to the #channel identified in practice settings.
- You can override the default and instead elect a different channel to send a correspondence entry to.
- You also have the option to @mention a user that you want to be notified specifically, such as the recipient of a phone message.
- Much like the email sent from this register, you will have an option to click through to AccountKit with all the details required to return a call or review a full file note.
- Within Teams you'll immediately see a message similar to the below; Selecting Record Summary to be redirected back into AccountKit with all of the relevant details already filled in.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I disconnect Teams?
You can disable for the full practice by heading back to your practice settings and simply press the Disconnect button.
Why haven't you done a notification for "x" function or tool?
The options are endless as to how we can utilise Teams to send out notifications. We've chosen those we believe will be of use without overwhelming your communication channels. Having said that, we are assessing a more flexible system where you can create rules around notifications, so you can create your own without us explicitly creating every combination available.
Why Teams and Slack and not one of the other options out there?
Our intent is to support as many providers as we can, but we'll always start with those that look to be dominating within the accountants eco-sphere and that make the process easy to implement. If we get enough enquiries for a specific integration, we'll add it to the list.
Legacy User Interface
NOTE: All initial connection elements are the same between legacy and the new user interface. Please read above up to the end of the 'Getting Started' section before continuing with the below steps.
Select your defaults
Now that you have connected Teams to your organisation you need to choose the default behaviours. Your options will be limited initially, but over time we add new triggers that you can elect to turn on.
- Expand the settings for the integration by selecting the
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- Use the refresh icon to refresh the channel list from Teams
- Set the default channel you want messages to be sent to. This can be overwritten within the Correspondence Register.
- Specific to the correspondence register, you can select a default behaviour for messages:
- Email (only) - This is the default behaviour; Make sure to NOT set a default channel here or then in the correspondence register, you need to leave it blank.
- Teams (only) - By default all messages will only go to the selected channel. No email will be sent.
- Email + Teams - By default all messages will go to both the recipient's email + the selected channel.
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If the teams channel is left empty, and the teams / email option is not selected, NO message will be sent. Seems obvious, but it's an easy oversight. |
Utilising the Teams Integration
Now that you have authorised Teams, you will notice that there are some new fields that will have appeared throughout AccountKit. But first, it's worth noting that there are two distinct types of interactions you will have through the integration:
- User triggered - This is where a user consciously chooses to send a notification to teams from within AccountKit, such as from the correspondence register.
- System triggered [TBD] - This is where the Practice Administrator has enabled automatic notifications in relation to certain tools when a trigger event has occurred - for example, the equipment finance tool can be set up to send a notification to a specific channel when a schedule comes to an end.
Correspondence Register
- The share with area will reveal a new teams option.
- By utilising this, any correspondence (such as phone messages or meeting notes) will go to the applicable channel. By default, it will go to the #channel identified in practice settings.
- You can override the default and instead elect a different channel to send a correspondence entry to.
- You also have the option to @mention a user that you want to be notified specifically, such as the recipient of a phone message.
- Much like the email sent from this register, you will have an option to click through to AccountKit with all the details required to return a call or review a full file note.
- Within Teams you'll immediately see a message similar to the below; Selecting Record Summary to be redirected back into AccountKit with all of the relevant details already filled in.
Related Links
Practice Settings - Integrations | Head to practice settings for the steps to enable this integration. |
Shared Elements (Eg. Action Menu) | Check out this link for various elements shared throughout the various toolsets. |
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