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What is the Microsoft Teams Service App?

Thread’s Microsoft Teams Service App allows contacts to create and manage support requests directly within their organization’s Teams environment: eliminating the need to send emails or call support. It’s the most popular way Thread Partners enable chat-based support for end customers.

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Frequently Asked Questions

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How does chatting in the Microsoft Teams Service App work?

Contacts can create and manage support requests in two ways:
  • Messenger Embedded Application
  • Native Teams Direct Messages (DMs)
1

Find the service provider's app

Contacts can find the service provider’s app by searching in the View more section of the Teams app menu or clicking on the pinned app.
2

Chat or create a request

From the app page, they can interact with open threads or create new requests using the Chat or Request button.
Yes! All messages, images, and files sent in a Group Chat are added to the thread conversation in Inbox and synced with the PSA ticket.
The new participant is automatically added as a CC’d contact in both the thread and the PSA ticket. If a contact leaves the chat, they are removed from both.
Thread matches Teams users to contacts by email address. When someone messages the Service App and no contact with their email exists yet, Thread resolves it automatically:
  • If a contact with that email already exists in your PSA at the mapped company, Thread links it and syncs it.
  • If no contact exists in the PSA either, Thread creates one in the PSA (using the company’s default contact type and site) and in Thread, so the user can start chatting right away.
  • If contact creation is disabled for your workspace, Thread creates the contact in Thread only, without a PSA record.
Guest users and external (federated) Teams users aren’t supported and can’t use the Service App.
For each Teams user, Microsoft returns two identifiers on the member record: the user principal name (UPN), which is their Entra ID sign-in address, and the mail value, which is the primary SMTP address of their Exchange mailbox. The two are often the same, but they can differ — for example, when a user signs in as first.last@contoso.onmicrosoft.com (UPN) but receives mail as first.last@contoso.com (Exchange primary SMTP).When a Teams user messages the Service App, Thread uses the Exchange primary SMTP address to look up the PSA contact. If Microsoft doesn’t return a mail value on the member — typically because the user has no Exchange mailbox — Thread falls back to the UPN. Aliases and additional proxy addresses on the Exchange mailbox aren’t used for matching.The practical implications:
  • If the same person exists in the PSA under a different address than their Exchange primary SMTP (or their UPN when no mailbox exists), Thread won’t match them. It creates a new PSA contact under the address Microsoft returned, which is the behavior you see when the same person appears in the PSA under multiple emails.
  • If a user’s UPN and Exchange primary SMTP differ, broadcasts and Service App messages route to the Exchange primary SMTP contact, not the UPN contact.
  • To make an existing PSA contact match, set that contact’s primary email in the PSA to the user’s Exchange primary SMTP address (or UPN, if the user has no mailbox).
Currently, this functionality isn’t supported in Inbox, and calls won’t appear as messages. Video and audio call support is on our roadmap—let us know if it’s valuable to you!