The Barista for Microsoft Teams app consists of multiple tab including a Home and Chat tab. If you've never used the app before, you can get started in the Chat tab by clicking on the tab at the top of the screen. In the Chat tab, enter a question in the Compose box at the bottom of the screen and either click the Send button or hit the return/enter key. Your question can be phrased in natural language. Short sentences typically work best. For example, you can ask: "How do I share a file in Drive" or "I have a problem with my laptop".
Barista will reply to your question with a personalized response using sophisticated natural language processing and machine learning models. You may continue the conversation using a combination of text, buttons and other controls as presented by Barista during the dialog. At any point, you may restart the conversation by selecting the Restart conversation command. If your conversation results in a ticket being created, you'll receive a notification with a link to the Home page.
The Home page shows tickets you've created (or were created on your behalf by others), announcements sent to you by administrators, and approval requests depending on the application configuration and role-based access controls. Each item is displayed in the form of an "adaptive" card. The cards may be filtered by clicking on the options beneath the tab bar (e.g., Announcements). Cards are sorted in reverse chronological order.
The button and menu options for each card depend on the type and lifecycle state of each item. For example, newly created tickets will show a Comments button. Click this to add details to requests including attachments (e.g., screenshots). Additional menu options are available in the ellipsis (...) menu. For example, you may cancel a ticket by clicking on the menu and then selecting Cancel from the menu.
Cards on the Home may also contain links to 3rd party systems. That said, Barista monitors the entire lifecycle of tickets so any change in status or comments by agents will automatically show up via notifications in the Chat tab and badged updates on the Home tab.
For more information about how to use Barista, check out the productivity tips below or visit Espressive.
Productivity Tips
Pin Barista
Barista can be pinned to the App bar so that it's always a click away. If it's not already shown, switch to the Barista app:
- Click the More apps button on the App bar (on the left-hand side of the screen)
- Select Barista from the recently used applications or search for it by typing "Barista" in the search bar. Note that you can browse for the Barista app by clicking the More apps > link at the bottom of the modal dialog.
- Right-click on the Barista app and select Pin from the contextual menu
Unblock Barista
Microsoft Teams gives users the ability to "block", or temporarily disable apps. If you see a message in the Chat tab stating, "You cannot send messages to this bot because you've blocked it", you may restore access by right-clicking the Barista app and selecting Unblock from the contextual menu. If this option is not available, please contact your Teams Administrator.