Audience: who the channel serves
Every channel has an Audience, which must match its agent’s:- Internal — a bot for your own technicians, installed into your own Microsoft 365 tenant and running with the full MSP toolbox you give the agent (it can work across all your companies). Deploy it with the custom internal bot guide.
- End-user — a white-label bot for your clients’ employees, installed into each client’s Microsoft 365 tenant and scoped to one company per conversation. Deploy it with the end-user bot guide.
How it fits together
- Internal — the user is one of your technicians, in your own tenant. The agent runs with your full MSP toolbox, across your whole client base.
- End-user — the user’s company is recognized automatically from the Microsoft 365 tenant their message comes from, via the tenant ID on the Company record, and every conversation is scoped to that company with a narrower toolbox (per-company instructions apply; the why and how: how end-user bots work).
Managing channels
Chat → Channels → New Channel.
| Field | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Name | Internal label, never shown to end users |
| Audience | Internal (your technicians) or End-user (your clients’ employees) — must match the agent. See Audience. |
| Transport | Teams (others coming soon) |
| Agent | Required — the conversational chat agent that answers. Every channel has one. |
| Status | Active (the default for new channels) — live, inbound messages reach the agent. Disconnected — paused; the bot stays installed in client tenants but messages aren’t routed. |
Branding
The channel dialog’s Branding section holds the display name, description, welcome message, and the two icons end users see in Teams. Everything is optional — any field you leave blank uses the Neo default, so a channel works the moment you create it. Clearing a field just restores its default.
- Welcome message is served at runtime — edits apply immediately, everywhere.
- Display name, description, and icons are baked into the installed Teams app — edits need the app re-published in each client tenant. Push update re-publishes to every link-installed tenant at once; see updating the bot.
Testing as an end-client
Before rolling a bot out to a client, chat with the end-user agent as a real end-user at that company — the same per-company instructions and the same restricted end-user toolbox apply, scoped to that person’s own tickets, just as they’d experience it — without installing anything in their tenant, and without needing a channel at all. It’s the fastest way to tune an agent’s per-client behavior. The test is reached from the Agents tab, because it tests the agent, not the channel. Admins and super-admins only, since the test acts as a real end-user.
Open the agent's test
On Chat → Agents, click Test on the end-user agent’s row (or open the row’s ⋮ menu → Test as end-client). Internal agents show Chat here instead — they have no end-client to act as.
Choose who to act as
In Test as end-client, pick the End-client company, then enter an End-user email — a real, active contact at that company. The agent acts as this person, so its tools resolve to their tickets.
Anything the agent files lands in your PSA as a real record, but unmistakably tagged: ticket titles get an [MSP TEST] prefix and a body line noting the ticket came from a dashboard test, not a real end-user. Test sessions bill like any other dashboard chat.
Troubleshooting
| What you see | Why | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| Test is missing or disabled on the agent’s row | It’s for end-user agents only, and acting as a real end-user is admin-only — Internal agents show Chat instead | Sign in as an admin or super-admin; if the agent is Internal, use Chat (it has no end-client to act as) |
| No active contact with that email at this company | The email must match an active contact synced from your PSA under the chosen company | Use an email that exists and is active for that company — re-sync contacts if it’s missing — or pick the company the contact actually belongs to |
| The agent can’t see the contact’s tickets | The contact resolved but the tickets live under a different company | Pick the company the contact’s tickets belong to |
Installing the bot
Where the bot installs follows the audience. Both produce a branded Teams app and bind routing to this channel; the full step-by-step lives in each guide.Internal — into your own tenant
An Internal channel installs into your own Microsoft 365 tenant for your technicians. From the saved channel, Generate install link and open it yourself as a Teams/Global admin (or download the Teams app package and sideload it). Full walkthrough: the custom internal bot guide. An Internal channel can only be installed in your own tenant — Neo refuses a client tenant, because it runs your full cross-company toolbox.End-user — into client tenants
The quickest path is a magic install link: pick the client company under White-label installs, click Generate install link, and send it to a Teams or Global administrator of the client’s Microsoft 365 tenant. They sign in once and approve; Neo publishes your branded app into their tenant and registers routing together — no zip upload. One branded bot per client — a company already bound to another channel can’t be added. (No admin access, or the app already installed? Register routing directly and upload the Teams app package manually instead.) Channel cards on the Channels tab show each channel’s bound-tenant count at a glance. The full step-by-step procedure — including the Teams admin center walk-through, verification, updates, and troubleshooting — is the end-user bot deployment guide.The company picker uses the Microsoft 365 tenant ID set on each Company — a company without one can’t be added until you set it there.
What people experience in Teams
This is the same for both audiences: your bot, your name and icon — Neo isn’t visible. The welcome message greets them on first contact; 1:1 chats always respond, group chats follow the agent’s mention mode;/reset or /new starts a fresh conversation.
While the bot works on a reply it shows a live “working…” card listing the steps it’s taking, so a longer answer never looks stuck. If you’d rather people just see the final answer, turn off Show progress updates in the channel’s settings — the card disappears and the bot’s answers are unchanged.
On an end-user channel, when a technician’s reply on a ticket is relayed into the chat, it’s labelled as coming from a person — with the ticket number and current status — so employees know it isn’t the AI. Adjust the wording, pick another language, or switch the label off under Label relayed technician messages in the channel’s settings.