PVA - Unable to share my bot with other team members

[thenecroscope1]

Hi,

We currently have a MS Office 365 E5 subscription within my team. I've just created a new bot and I've exported the model manifest zip file (without applying for approval). When I have passed this over to my colleague they have managed to import the VA bot manifest file into Teams. As soon as they try to use it they are getting an access denied message. Any helpers please 🙂

I'm not able to currently publish my bot as I'm not sure who our Office 365 admin is. I work for a large corporate, ideally I'm trying to bypass submitting this and I just want to test it out with our team 1st. 

What can I do to fix the permissions issue. I do not want to share the bot with them as I do not want them to have access to change the bot. I've setup the authentication within the bot to always force login. I've then changed the bot to be able to be used company wide.

Thoughts?

many thanks

[renatoromao · Accepted solution]

Hi @thenecroscope1 ,

First of all, did you create your first chatbot using PVA for Teams or PVA for Web? 

And how did you exported your bot to a zip file?

Did you use this documentation here?

Important concepts: When we are developing a bot within Microsoft Teams, we need to create for a specific team.

Your permissions are determined by your Microsoft Teams roles in the team where your bot is created:

• Team Owners can create, view, edit, and configure all bots in the team where they are Team Owners.
• Team Members can create, edit, and configure bots they have created. They can view other member's bots in the team.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-virtual-agents/teams/admin-share-bots-teams?WT.mc_id=BA-MVP-5... 

Once you've published your bot, you can share it with other Microsoft Teams users so they can find it in the Microsoft Teams app store. You can share it with your team directly.

You can share the bot with your organization by submitting your bot for admin approval to be featured in the Built for your-organization-name > Built by your org section.

Admin approval details: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-virtual-agents/teams/publication-add-bot-to-microsoft-teams-t... 

Use the Teams App Submission API to submit and approve your custom apps - Microsoft Teams | Microsof...

Let me know if you have more questions about it.

[thenecroscope1]

Great thanks for the quick response and detail. Let me review your links now, see what I've done wrong 🙂

Sorry I should have made this a bit clearer. I'm only using VA web and calling some Flows. Once I've completed my VA bot, I then go to publish. Publish works for me fine. The only option I have left enabled now is the Teams Channel. I go to the Teams channel and then click for Submit for admin approval. This steps works also for me. I'm not sure where my approvals are ending up at the minute. I then download the manifest file and hand this over to my college. He is able to import it all fine, but the bot then throws up a message saying access denied. I'm not sure if this is license issue or a permissions issues at this stage. Let me review your links. Thanks for getting back to me and your time 🙂

[thenecroscope1]

Ah ha! I think I get it in now. So the moral of the story is do not use the VA web interface but use Teams, which then auto handles the user permissions - got it!

Thanks for the pointers @renatoromao , I didn't realise you can build these within the Teams GUI.

thanks again 🙂

[renatoromao]

@thenecroscope1 ,

Yes, permissions are a little different when we are sharing with co-authors and users.

No problem, count on me if you need anything else.

[micchow]

@thenecroscope1 , who can chat with the bot depends on the Authentication and Access setting on the bot.  I would recommend go to Configure -> Security to check the what is configured on the bot.  Sounds like you are distributing the bot widely to your coworkers in Microsoft Teams so I would recommend changing setting to:

1. Authentication -> Only for Teams

2. Access -> Everyone in the organization

Remember to publish your bot after you make those changes and now everyone in your organization should not see the no access message any more.  For those who saw it previously, type in 'start over' to the bot conversation in Microsoft Teams will start a new conversation that honors the new access setting.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-virtual-agents/configuration-security

@renatoromao is correct that by creating a bot in PVA Teams we have a different default access setting.  However, your scenario seems very doable with PVA web portal too.  Hope it helps 🙂