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Deployment Guide

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Abhijeet Bodhankar edited this page Aug 10, 2020 · 30 revisions

Prerequisites

To begin, you will need:

  • An Azure subscription where you can create the following kind of resources:
    • App service
    • App service plan
    • Bot channels registration
    • Azure storage account
    • Azure search
    • Azure function
    • QnAMaker cognitive service
    • Application Insights
  • A team in Microsoft Teams with your group of experts. (You can add and remove team members later!)
  • A copy of the FAQ Plus app GitHub repo (https://github.com/OfficeDev/microsoft-teams-apps-faqplus)
  • A reasonable set of Question and Answer pairs to set up the knowledge base for the bot.

Step 1: Register Azure AD applications

Register two Azure AD applications in your tenant's directory: one for the bot, and another for the configuration app.

  1. Log in to the Azure Portal for your subscription, and go to the "App registrations" blade here.

  2. Click on "New registration", and create an Azure AD application.

    1. Name: The name of your Teams app - if you are following the template for a default deployment, we recommend "FAQ Plus".
    2. Supported account types: Select "Accounts in any organizational directory"
    3. Leave the "Redirect URL" field blank.

Azure registration page

  1. Click on the "Register" button.

  2. When the app is registered, you'll be taken to the app's "Overview" page. Copy the Application (client) ID and Directory (tenant) ID; we will need it later. Verify that the "Supported account types" is set to Multiple organizations.

  1. On the side rail in the Manage section, navigate to the "Certificates & secrets" section. In the Client secrets section, click on "+ New client secret". Add a description for the secret and select an expiry time. Click "Add".

Azure AD overview page

  1. Once the client secret is created, copy its Value; we will need it later.

  2. Go back to “App registrations”, then repeat steps 2-3 to create another Azure AD application for the configuration app.

    1. Name: The name of your configuration app. We advise appending “Configuration” to the name of this app; for example, “FAQ Plus Configuration”.
    2. Supported account types: Select "Account in this organizational directory only"
    3. Leave the "Redirect URL" field blank for now.

At this point you have 4 unique values:

  • Application (client) ID for the bot
  • Client secret for the bot
  • Application (client) ID for the configuration app
  • Directory (tenant) ID, which is the same for both apps

We recommend that you copy these values into a text file, using an application like Notepad. We will need these values later.

Configuration step 3

Step 2: Deploy to your Azure subscription

  1. Click on the "Deploy to Azure" button below.

Deploy to Azure

  1. When prompted, log in to your Azure subscription.

  2. Azure will create a "Custom deployment" based on the ARM template and ask you to fill in the template parameters.

  3. Select a subscription and resource group.

  • We recommend creating a new resource group.
  • The resource group location MUST be in a datacenter that supports: Application Insights; Azure Search; and QnA Maker. For an up-to-date list, click here, and select a region where the following services are available:
  • Application Insights
  • QnA Maker
  • Azure Search
  1. Enter a "Base Resource Name", which the template uses to generate names for the other resources.
  • The app service names [Base Resource Name], [Base Resource Name]-config, and [Base Resource Name]-qnamaker must be available. For example, if you select contosofaqplus as the base name, the names contosofaqplus, contosofaqplus-config, and contosofaqplus-qnamaker must be available (not taken); otherwise, the deployment will fail with a Conflict error.
  • Remember the base resource name that you selected. We will need it later.

  1. Fill in the various IDs in the template:

    1. Bot Client ID: The application (client) ID of the Microsoft Teams Bot app

    2. Bot Client Secret: The client secret of the Microsoft Teams Bot app

    3. Config App Client Id: The application (client) ID of the configuration app

    4. Tenant Id: The tenant ID registered in Step 1. If your Microsoft Teams tenant is same as Azure subscription tenant, then we would recommend to keep the default values.

Make sure that the values are copied as-is, with no extra spaces. The template checks that GUIDs are exactly 36 characters.

  1. Fill in the "Config Admin UPN List", which is a semicolon-delimited list of users who will be allowed to access the configuration app.

  1. If you wish to change the app name, description, and icon from the defaults, modify the corresponding template parameters.

  2. Agree to the Azure terms and conditions by clicking on the check box "I agree to the terms and conditions stated above" located at the bottom of the page.

  3. Click on "Purchase" to start the deployment.

  4. Wait for the deployment to finish. You can check the progress of the deployment from the "Notifications" pane of the Azure Portal. It can take more than 10 minutes for the deployment to finish.

  5. Once the deployment has finished, you would be directed to a page that has the following fields:

  • botId - This is the Microsoft Application ID for the FAQ Plus bot.
  • appDomain - This is the base domain for the FAQ Plus Bot.
  • configurationAppUrl - This is the URL for the configuration web application.

Step 3: Set up authentication for the configuration app

  1. Note the location of the configuration app that you deployed, which is https://[BaseResourceName]-config.azurewebsites.net. For example, if you chose "contosofaqplus" as the base name, the configuration app will be at https://contosofaqplus-config.azurewebsites.net

  2. Go back to the "App Registrations" page here.

  3. Click on the configuration app in the application list. Under "Manage", click on "Authentication" to bring up authentication settings.

  4. Add new entries to "Redirect URLs": a. Type: Web b. Redirect URLs: If your configuration app's URL is https://contosofaqplus-config.azurewebsites.net, then add the following three entries as the Redirect URLs:

    Note: Please refer to Step 3.1 for more details about the URL.

  5. Under "Implicit grant", check "ID tokens". The reason to check "ID tokens" is because you are using only the accounts on your current Azure tenant and using that to authenticate yourself in the configuration app.

  6. Click "Save" to commit your changes.

Step 4: Create the QnA Maker knowledge base

Create a knowledge base, following the instructions in the QnA Maker documentation.

Skip the step, "Create a QnA service in Microsoft Azure", because the ARM template that you deployed in Step 2 "Deploy to your Azure subscription" already created the QnA service. Proceed directly to the next step, "Connect your QnA service to your KB".

Use the following values when connecting to the QnA service:

  • Microsoft Azure Directory ID: The tenant associated with the Azure subscription selected in Step 2.1.
  • Azure subscription name: The Azure subscription to which the ARM template was deployed.
  • Azure QnA service: The QnA service created during the deployment. This is the same as the "Base resource name"; for example, if you chose "contosofaqplus" as the base name, the QnA Maker service will be named contosofaqplus.

Screenshot of settings

Multi-Turn Enablement

With the new updates to the FAQ Plus app template, the knowledge base can now support multi-turn conversations. To understand the basics of multi-turn conversations, navigate to the QnA Maker documentation to understand about multi-turn conversations. To enable multi-turn on the newly created knowledge base, go to this link to enable multi-turn extraction.

  • Note: For best practices with regards to formatting and document structure, please follow the guidelines here.

After publishing the knowledge base, note the knowledge base ID (see screenshot).

Screenshot of the publishing page

Remember the knowledge base ID: we will need it in the next step.

Step 5: Finish configuring the FAQ Plus app

  1. Go to the configuration app, which is at https://[BaseResourceName]-config.azurewebsites.net. For example, if you chose “contosofaqplus” as the base name, the configuration app will be at https://contosofaqplus-config.azurewebsites.net.

  2. You will be prompted to login with your credentials. Make sure that you log in with an account that is in the list of users allowed to access the configuration app.

Config web app page

  1. Get the link to the team with your experts from the Teams client. To do so, open Microsoft Teams, and navigate to the team. Click on the "..." next to the team name, then select "Get link to team".

Get link to Team

Cick on "Copy" to copy the link to the clipboard.

Link to team

  1. Paste the copied link into the "Team Id" field, then press "OK".

Add team link form

  1. Enter the QnA Maker knowledge base ID into the "Knowledge base ID" field, then press "OK".

  2. Customize the "Welcome message" that's sent to your Endusers when they install the app. This message supports basic markdown, such as bold, italics, bulleted lists, numbered lists, and hyperlinks. See here for complete details on what Markdown features are supported.

Notes

Remember to click on "OK" after changing a setting. To edit the setting later, click on "Edit" to make the text box editable.

Step 6: Create the Teams app packages

Create two Teams app packages: one for end-users to install personally, and one to be installed to the experts team.

  1. Open the Manifest\manifest_enduser.json file in a text editor.

  2. Change the placeholder fields in the manifest to values appropriate for your organization.

  • developer.name (What's this?)

  • developer.websiteUrl

  • developer.privacyUrl

  • developer.termsOfUseUrl

  1. Change the <<botId>> placeholder to your Azure AD application's ID from above. This is the same GUID that you entered in the template under "Bot Client ID".

  2. In the "validDomains" section, replace the <<appDomain>> with your Bot App Service's domain. This will be [BaseResourceName].azurewebsites.net. For example if you chose "contosofaqplus" as the base name, change the placeholder to contosofaqplus.azurewebsites.net.

  3. Save and Rename manifest_enduser.json file to a file named manifest.json.

  4. Create a ZIP package with the manifest.json,color.png, and outline.png. The two image files are the icons for your app in Teams.

  • Name this package faqplus-enduser.zip, so you know that this is the app for end-users.
  • Make sure that the 3 files are the top level of the ZIP package, with no nested folders.

File explorer

  1. Delete the manifest.json file.

Repeat the steps above but with the file Manifest\manifest_sme.json. Name the resulting package faqplus-experts.zip, so you know that this is the app for experts.

Step 7: Run the apps in Microsoft Teams

  1. If your tenant has sideloading apps enabled, you can install your app by following the instructions here

  2. You can also upload it to your tenant's app catalog, so that it can be available for everyone in your tenant to install. See here

  3. Install the experts app (the faqplus-experts.zip package) to your team of subject-matter experts. This MUST be the same team that you selected in Step 5.3 above.

  1. Install the end-user app (the faqplus-enduser.zip package) to your users.

Troubleshooting

Please see our Troubleshooting page.

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