Microsoft Teams

Once your organization's Teams bot is provisioned, you can chat with Strata directly inside a Microsoft Teams conversation — no browser, no extra sign-in.

[User] Chatting with the Strata bot in Teams

After your IT admin installs the Strata Teams app into your tenant, find the Strata bot in your Teams chat list and send a message. The bot reuses the same user account, settings, and data your web app is bound to (resolved through your Microsoft AAD object ID), so anything you've already configured — connected SQL Server, OneDrive, Outlook, AI model, mode, permission tier — applies in Teams too.

If you've never signed in to Strata on the web before, the bot replies with a Sign in to Strata first card: open Strata (the card's Open Strata button), sign in with Microsoft using the account you use in Teams, then come back and send your question again. There is nothing to link: Teams knows you by that account. Type /signin at any time to see which Strata account and organization Teams knows you as.

If something else stops you, the card says what and who can change it: your organization has not given your account access, an admin turned your account off, your organization's access is suspended, or its subscription is not active. Teams decides this from the same records as the web app.

[User] Watching an answer as it works

While Strata works on a question that takes several steps (a query, a document, a search), the bot posts a checklist of those steps, the same ones the web chat shows, and updates it as it goes, with how long it has been working. When the answer is ready, the checklist shrinks to one line, such as Worked for 23s · 4 steps, and the answer follows below it. A quick answer with no steps shows no checklist.

The checklist has a Stop button. Press it to end the answer; the checklist then reads Stopped after 9s. Only the person who asked can stop an answer: anyone else who presses Stop is told so, and the answer carries on.

At the bottom of each answer, a small line names the model that wrote it, for example Claude Sonnet 5.5, or Auto · GPT-5.4 Mini when Auto picked it, followed by a reminder that responses may not always be accurate. A long answer that arrives in several cards carries that line once, under the last card.

When Strata suggests follow-up questions, they appear as buttons at the bottom of the answer; tap one to ask it. If an answer fails, its card says so and offers Try again (your same question), New conversation and Help. If the model sends back no answer at all, Strata says The model returned no answer. Please try again. rather than leaving only the closed checklist.

[User] Strata in a channel or group chat

Mention @Strata with your question. Strata reads your message without the mention, so commands work there too (@Strata help), and anyone else you mention reads as their name. When Strata is first added to a chat or a team, it posts a short welcome card with what it can do and a link to open Strata on the web.

[User] Commands

The Teams bot understands a small set of typed commands plus natural-language questions. Each works with a slash or without one (/new or new), and Teams' own command menu offers them: in a personal chat all of them, in a channel or group chat /new, /status, /usage, /signin and /help.

Anything else you type is treated as a natural-language question and sent to the AI exactly as if you'd typed it in the web app's chat.

The model IDs the bot recognizes come from your organization's Model Catalog — the same catalog the web app's model picker draws from. The Settings card (type settings) narrows its picker to the models your org, role, and per-user access allow — the same models the web app lets you run — so a model you can't use never appears there. The typed /model command recognizes any catalog model ID; if you set one that policy doesn't permit you to use, the bot enforces governance by clamping back to your first allowed model on your next message (see the note below). If you send /model with an ID that isn't in the catalog at all, the bot replies with the list of model IDs it recognizes.

[User] Selecting model, mode, and permission per user

Open the Settings card (type settings) to pick:

• AI Model — the picker lists the models from your organization's Model Catalog that you're allowed to use. Strata runs a central Model Catalog (curated by Kronisys, served through Microsoft Azure AI Foundry) spanning providers including OpenAI, Anthropic, xAI, and more; your admin enables a subset for the org, and your role and per-user access can narrow it further. A disabled model never appears as a choice. The first choice, Auto, lets Strata pick the model for each message from the ones you may use (see Auto). See Models for the full picture.
• Response Mode — Auto (adapts to each question), Technical (code and detail), or Simple (plain language only).
• Permission Level — Viewer (read-only queries), Editor (read + write), or Admin (full access including DDL). On a database connection your organization shares, the bot never uses a higher level than your access to that connection grants — the same limit the web app applies, checked again on every message.

Click Save Settings. Choices persist to the same user_settings row your web app reads, so changing in Teams updates your defaults everywhere.

Note

The bot enforces model governance exactly like the web app. If your selected model is later disabled for your org, the bot falls back to your first allowed model on your next message — your choice isn't honored if policy no longer permits it. If the model was retired, the bot first switches to its replacement, then applies the same check.

[User + Admin] What works in Teams vs. the web app

Teams covers the core conversational surface: natural-language questions, SQL execution, Excel, Word, PowerPoint and PDF files (delivered as Adaptive Cards with download links), and conversation history. The web app remains the place for:

• Connecting new SQL Server databases, OneDrive, or Outlook for the first time. Teams reads the connections, but the credential / OAuth flows happen on the web.
• The full artifact panel, dashboards, voice mode, and incognito chat.
• Creating agents. Ask the bot to set up an agent and it answers that agents are created in the web app, points you to its Agents page, and offers to write out the agent's name, schedule and instructions for you to paste. In the web app you can ask for the agent in a chat and create it from the draft card; see Create an agent from a chat.
• All admin work — user management, roles, audit, agent governance, org settings.

OneDrive and Outlook sessions established on the web are automatically restored when the Teams bot resolves your session, so any extension you connect on the web is available to the bot — within the same extension access the web app applies. An extension your organization, your role or an admin's per-person switch keeps from you is unavailable in Teams too, and a role saved with no extension ticked allows none, unless a role bound to one of your groups grants it.

Every AI call the bot makes routes through the same Azure AI Foundry the web app uses — your organization's own Foundry, in your own Azure tenant (see Bring your own Azure AI Foundry). Teams messages never touch any other engine. Usage limits and quotas also apply in Teams: a message that would exceed your org's budget is refused the same way it would be on the web, with the same sentence. It says when your admins have been notified, and at your own monthly spend limit it links to Settings → Usage in Strata, where Request more usage asks your admins for more.

[Admin] Setup overview

Teams setup is coordinated by Kronisys. Your IT team installs the Strata app into your Microsoft 365 tenant and governs it like any other Teams app. Regardless of the bot identity, every message is bound to your Strata account and routed through the same Azure AI Foundry the web app uses — your organization's own Foundry, in your own Azure tenant.

The steps the customer takes vs. the steps Kronisys takes are:

Expect the back-and-forth to take roughly one business day. The provisioning ticket includes your org label, org ID, the requesting admin's email, and a timestamp so the engineering team can wire everything to the right tenant.

[Admin] Managing the Teams extension's availability

The Teams extension is governed the same way as the other extensions:

• Organization → Extensions — turn the Microsoft Teams switch (in the Microsoft 365 group) off to remove teams from the org. With the list in Ceiling mode, the bot stops answering org members' questions and replies that Microsoft Teams is not turned on for their Strata account, naming where an admin can turn it on; in Menu mode each role's own list decides, so members whose role lists Teams keep it. Turn the switch back on to restore access. (Roles can narrow the extension set further than the org allows.)
• Teams is opt-in per role, too. The built-in User and Admin roles leave Microsoft Teams out on purpose, and built-in roles can't be edited. Turning Teams on for the organization is not enough on its own: a member reaches the bot through a custom role that lists Teams (Organization → Roles), or a role bound to one of their groups that does.
• Removing the Teams extension does not uninstall the bot from users' Teams clients. To fully remove the integration, work with Kronisys to retire the bot registration.

What can go wrong

• "Sign in to Strata first" — your Microsoft account has no matching Strata user. Sign in once on the web with that account (which provisions the user record) and retry in Teams.
• "Your Strata account is turned off" or "Your organization's access is suspended" — Strata is stopped for you on the web as well as in Teams. Your Strata admin can change it.
• The command menu still shows connect or disconnect — your organization runs the Teams app from before version 1.2.0. An admin uploads the new app package in the Teams admin center.
• The bot doesn't respond at all — the bot may not be installed in your tenant yet, or your admin removed it. Check that you can see Strata under Apps > Manage your apps in Teams.
• db command shows "No Saved Databases" — you have no SQL Server connections saved. Add one in the web app under Settings > Apps, then retry.
• The bot says "Database connection was lost..." — the in-memory connection pool was recycled (after 30 minutes of idle time, or after a service restart). Type db and reselect the connection to re-open the pool.
• A model in /model isn't recognized — the ID isn't in the Model Catalog at all. The bot replies with the list of model IDs it recognizes; pick one of those. If you set a model that is in the catalog but disabled for your org, role, or user, the bot accepts the command but clamps back to your first allowed model when you next send a question — so the effective model always honors policy. Use the Settings card to see only the models you're allowed to run.
• "Microsoft Teams is not turned on for your Strata account." — teams is off for you: an admin removed it from the org's allowed extensions (in Ceiling mode), your role doesn't list it (a role saved with no extension ticked lists none, and the built-in User and Admin roles leave Teams out on purpose), or an admin turned Microsoft Teams off for you under Organization → Users. The message reads the same in every case, and goes on: "Your Strata admin can give you a role that includes Teams (Organization › Roles), directly or through a group. If your organization limits its extensions, Teams also has to be allowed in Organization › Extensions, and if Teams is turned off on your own account, your admin can turn it back on in Organization › Users." Built-in roles can't be edited, so if yours is one, your admin can move you to a custom role that lists Teams, or bind one to a group you're in.
• "Strata could not check your access to Microsoft Teams just now. Try again in a moment." — when your message arrived, Strata had no recent answer for you to go on, and either couldn't read which extensions you're allowed, or could read everything except the roles your groups give you and, without those, Teams isn't allowed for you. Rather than guess, the bot refuses: it doesn't act on that message, and the message on its own doesn't mean Teams has been taken away from you. Send the message again in a moment.

Related

• Models — the Model Catalog and how model availability is governed.
• Organization — managing allowed extensions and the Model Catalog.
• Onboarding your organization — checking the Teams option during onboarding to kick off provisioning.
• Integrations overview — the extension model in one page.