Azure AI integration

The absentify Teams Bot delivers absence notifications in Microsoft Teams. Day-to-day steps are in the Teams Bot guide. The assistant answers documentation questions in the app and Teams. When workspace data access is on, it can also use permitted live workspace data and offer actions for you to review and confirm.

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What the Teams Bot does without workspace data access

The bot works as soon as a user has a linked Microsoft account and receives Teams notifications. Azure AI is not required for these actions:

• Instant Adaptive Cards in Microsoft Teams for leave requests, approvals, and representative requests
• Approve or Decline a request from the card (a decline asks for a reason)
• Accept or Decline a representative assignment from the card
• A welcome card when someone starts a chat with the bot, with links to absentify and the documentation

Users choose Email, Teams Notification, or Both under Notification settings. Teams messages only arrive when the Microsoft account is linked.

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What the assistant in the app does without workspace data access

The in-app assistant still answers product questions using the documentation. It receives the messages you type, so avoid including personal or sensitive information in a help question. With workspace access off, the assistant does not automatically receive member context, query live workspace data, or reuse earlier assistant answers containing automatically retrieved workspace data. It can explain plan features from the documentation, but cannot check your current plan or seats. If you ask about your own absences or remaining days while workspace data access is off, the assistant adds a separate hint: “Workspace data access is switched off, so I cannot look up absences, balances or other workspace data. You can still ask how absentify works. An admin can change workspace data access.” If the documentation does not cover the question, the assistant says: “I couldn’t find this in our documentation. Please try asking it a different way, or write to support@absentify.com and a person will help you.”

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What workspace data access adds

When workspace data access is on, users can chat in Microsoft Teams or in the assistant in the app. Both use the same tools. The tools depend on the user’s role. How-to answers still include links to help articles and name the role, plan, or setting that applies. For all users:

• View their own absences
• View team absences they are allowed to see
• Check available leave types
• Check remaining allowance
• See their approvers
• Create or cancel a leave request
• Ask how a feature works

For users assigned as a representative:

• View pending representative requests
• Accept or decline representative coverage

For managers, admins, and approvers:

• View pending approvals
• Approve a request
• Decline a request with a reason

With workspace access off, the Teams Bot still answers documentation questions using the messages you type. It cannot query workspace data or perform workspace actions. Notification cards still work.

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Data handling and security

• When workspace access is off: the in-app help chat still sends your messages to Azure AI for documentation answers. Automatic member context, live workspace tools, and previous assistant answers containing automatically retrieved workspace data are excluded. Information you type yourself can still be processed.
• When workspace access is on: prompts can include recent conversation turns and relevant workspace context or tool results, such as names, leave types, absence dates, reasons, and allowances. Access follows the user’s permissions.
• Azure inference: model inference uses EU Data Zone deployments. Microsoft does not use customer prompts or responses to train foundation models. Provider security and abuse monitoring may involve retention and authorized human review under Microsoft’s terms.
• Chat storage: in-app questions and answers are stored in absentify. Turning workspace access off does not delete existing chats. See the Privacy Policy for processing details.
• Check the result: AI can be wrong. Verify answers and actions, especially decisions affecting employees. Before the assistant performs a change in Teams or the app, review and confirm the proposed action and its content.

absentify covers the Azure AI usage cost. Separate AI translation features and external MCP connections have their own plan and access rules; see the plan feature matrix. The workspace setting does not control internal support AI processing.

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Control workspace data access

1. Go to Settings > Microsoft as a workspace administrator.
2. Turn on or off Azure AI integration.