Derdack has been providing a ChatOps solution for Microsoft Lync and Skype for Business since 2009 when we launched the first integration into Microsoft Lync. Now, the solution is incredibly powerful enabling a wealth of integrations and actions to control systems. At the same it uses the power of Microsoft Skype for Business regarding connected teams and people.

About ChatOps

ChatOps is the new hype in collaboration.

By definition it is “a collaboration model that connects people, tools, process, and automation into a transparent workflow. This flow connects the work needed, the work happening, and the work done in a persistent location staffed by the people, bots, and related tools.” (Source: Atlassian Blogs)

The advantages of ChatOps are at hand. A single system of record (i.e. the chat systems with its logging) and a convenient way of connecting to peers, experts and systems. The downside from my point of view – cryptic communication with systems (some sort of powershell in your chat window).

ChatOps with Derdack

This is how Derdack provides ChatOps for SfB out-of-the-box. Derdack can do alert notifications via Skype for Business (SfB). When you connect Enterprise Alert to SfB, it automatically registers as a SfB user. This natively represents the ChatBot.

Whenever an alert is notified to a user and the user does have a SfB address in their notification profile, the Enterprise Alert ChatBot will send an IM to the user. Thus, an IM session is automatically started between the ChatBot and the user. The user can now start communicating with the ChatBot and submit commands for alert management. Acknowledgement or Closing of an alert are possible out-of-the-box.

The alerted user can also invite other peers and experts to this conversation thus automatically sharing the incident alert with others.

The solution is extensible through the Application Programming Toolkit of Enterprise Alert. You can add any command you want to control other systems and execute actions. Enterprise Alert is able to parse incoming IMs and then trigger actions like

• creating an incident ticket in SCSM, HPE Service Manager or ServiceNow
• execute a batch job on a server
• trigger an automation job in SCO or Azure
• etc

There are unlimited option to extend the Enterprise Alert ChatBot and the overall ChatOps solution.

ChatOps for security-sensitive scenarios

If you consider online ChatOps solutions with Slack or other tools to be a security bullseye then you might want to consider an on-premise, walled garden solution with Derdack Enterprise Alert. All systems are connected in a secure manner and nobody external can use and communicate with the Enterprise Alert ChatBot. Authentication is seamless as you are already authenticated against the Active Directory when using SfB.

Read more about Enterprise Alert