Skip to main content

Chat Agent: Admin setup

Step-by-step admin guide to install the Cinode Chat Agent from Cinode Flows and connect it to Slack or Microsoft Teams, including required roles, user matching and how to test.

Written by Magnus Burton

This article is for the administrator who installs the Cinode Chat Agent and connects it to Slack or Microsoft Teams. It lists who is needed, the steps for each platform, how people are matched to Cinode users, and how to check that it works. For what the Chat Agent does for end users, see Meet the Chat Agent.

Note: A Cinode company runs the Chat Agent on one chat platform, Slack or Microsoft Teams, not both. Choose one before you start.

Before you start

You need these before you begin:

  • The Chat Agent add-on enabled for your Cinode account.

  • A Cinode user with the Admin and Flows permissions. Installing an integration is a company-level action. See Cinode Flows.

  • For Slack: someone who is allowed to install apps in your Slack workspace.

  • For Microsoft Teams: a Teams administrator, a Microsoft administrator account for the sign-in in the wizard, and a Privileged Role Administrator if you want to grant the optional directory permission.

Step 1: Install the Chat Agent in Cinode Flows

  1. In Cinode, go to Flows > Integrations.

  2. Find the Chat Agent for your platform, Slack or Microsoft Teams, and click Add.

  3. In the configuration wizard, connect Cinode when it asks you to authorise. This is the Cinode company the Chat Agent will serve.

  4. Continue with the steps for your platform below, in the same wizard.

The wizard guides you through each connection. You do not enter any keys or tokens yourself.

Step 2 for Slack: Connect your Slack workspace

  1. In the wizard, choose to connect Slack.

  2. Sign in to Slack if asked, then approve the Cinode app for your workspace.

  3. Finish the wizard.

The Cinode app asks Slack for the permissions it needs to read and post messages, read user email addresses, and show its Home tab and slash command. If Cinode later adds a permission, a Slack administrator has to approve the update once for each workspace.

Step 2 for Microsoft Teams: Install the app and connect Microsoft

Cinode owns and runs the Teams bot. You upload the app package to your tenant, make it available to your users and then sign in with Microsoft so Cinode can route messages to your organisation. Do the steps in this order:

  1. Upload the app package. As a Teams administrator, open the link in the configuration wizard. It takes you to the bottom of the Meet the Chat Agent article, where you download cinode-teams.zip. In the Teams admin center, go to Teams apps > Manage apps > Upload new app and upload it. It can take some hours before the app appears.

  2. Allow the app. Set the app to Allowed and make it available to everyone or to chosen groups.

  3. Pre-install it for your users. Add the app for users with Edit installs on the app page, or with an app setup policy. This is needed because Teams only allows a proactive message to a person once the app is in their personal scope. Alerts and reminders depend on it. The installation can take some hours, and a user may have to sign out of Teams and back in.

  4. Grant the optional directory permission. A Privileged Role Administrator grants admin consent for the Microsoft Graph application permission User.Read.All in the Microsoft Entra admin center. It lets Cinode find a person by email address to start a direct message. Without it, the Chat Agent still answers questions, but proactive messages such as alerts and reminders may not reach people who have never messaged the app. A lower role cannot grant this permission.

  5. Sign in with Microsoft in the wizard. In the Cinode configuration wizard, connect Microsoft and sign in with a Microsoft administrator account. The sign-in identifies your Microsoft 365 tenant. Until it is done, Cinode has no way to route Teams messages to your account, even if the wizard otherwise shows as deployed.

For the full list of permissions the app requests, what each one is for and how to revoke access, see Chat Agent for Microsoft Teams: permissions and security.

How people are matched to Cinode users

The Chat Agent reads the email address on each person's verified Slack or Teams account and looks for the Cinode user with the same email address. The match ignores upper and lower case and must be an exact match. What a person can see and do then depends on that Cinode user's permission level, teams and customers.

Make sure of the following for everyone who should use the Chat Agent:

  • They have an active Cinode user. A disconnected user gets no access.

  • The email on their Cinode user is the same as the email on their Slack or Teams profile.

  • If two Cinode users share the same email, the first match is used.

  • Their chat profile shares an email address. On Teams, the app must be allowed to see user emails.

A person without a matching Cinode user gets a message that the Chat Agent could not find their account. They receive no answers and no proactive messages.

Step 3: Check that it works

  1. Open a direct message with the Chat Agent. In Slack, open the app from the Apps section. In Teams, open it from the app list.

  2. Send "What roles am I booked on?" You should get a short answer with a link into Cinode.

  3. Add the Chat Agent to a channel and mention it with a question. After a few seconds of being added to a channel it posts a short introduction once, unless someone mentions it first.

  4. For Teams, ask a test user who has the app installed and has signed in to message the Chat Agent with "Remind me in 10 minutes", and confirm the reminder arrives. This checks that proactive messages work.

If something does not work, see Chat: Troubleshooting.

Limits that Cinode manages for your company

Three limits are managed by Cinode and are not set in your wizard. Contact Cinode Support to change them.

  • Alerts per user: 15 by default. A value of 0 means unlimited.

  • Usage allowance per user: 1,000,000 tokens by default. This is a cost guardrail based on the amount of work the Chat Agent does, not a message count. It is approximate, so a single large question can pass the limit slightly.

  • Allowance window: 24 hours by default. The window starts at the person's first question and resets that many hours later.

Quiet hours, the schedule of tips and the limit of one unrequested message per person per day are fixed and cannot be changed.

Turn it off

To stop the Chat Agent, disable or remove the integration in Cinode Flows. This stops all processing, whatever you do in Slack or Microsoft 365. Existing alert subscriptions and preferences are not deleted automatically.

Did this answer your question?

Related Articles