Who Bot: A Hidden Gem in Microsoft Teams

You’ve been working from home for months now.  You’re chatting with a coworker in Teams who says a name you don’t recognize—a new hire you haven’t been told about.  Your first questions are likely to be:

• Who?
• Who’s that?
• What department does he/she work in?
• Who does he/she report to?
• What role did he/she fill?

The person you’re chatting with knows some of the answers, but shouldn’t be an easier way to get this info? Aside from the obvious approach (introducing yourself to said new person like an extroverted stalker), you can use Who Bot.

What is Who Bot?

Who bot is a chat bot that is made available through Teams.  It can tell you things about your coworkers, provide information about meetings, help you find people by skillset, and more. In order to access Who bot, just look at the controls to the left of Teams.  If you click on the ellipse, a menu will appear with a handful of available apps, and Who is right there.

Additionally, you can spark up a chat with Who by simply sending a message.

To engage with Who, start asking a question with the word…wait for it: “Who.”  A menu will appear with sample questions to ask:

Let’s give Who a try

Let’s say that our new coworker is named Alex. You can start by asking “Who is Alex?”  If there happens to be only one Alex in your organization, his profile will pop up, like so:

We now know his full name is Alex Wilber, he’s a Marketing Assistant, works for the Marketing department and, in this scenario, I can see where in the building he works and what his phone number is.  The icons underneath his profile give you quick ways to communicate with Alex or dig into who Alex works with.

From left to right, the icons allow you to:

1. Start a chat with Alex
2. Send Alex an email
3. See an org chart that displays who he reports to, who his peers are, and who reports to him
4. Start a video call
5. Start an audio call

Under those are 3 buttons: Manager, Works with, and Peers.  These buttons will show you those people within the chat (and not in an org chart like the above buttons do). Let’s take a look at the org chart. As you can see, it’s showing Alex’s peers and his director (and we can also see who the director reports to).  This is a condensed view of the organization. If we were to click on the president, we would see all of her direct reports (which are more than just Miriam).

If we go back to his profile card and click Peers, we would see a similar view directly in the chat:

Wrapping it up

There you have it: some basic information about Alex—and you didn’t have to ask anyone. Who bot is a small gem of a tool in Microsoft Teams that is surprisingly useful. If you work in a large organization it can help you find people, their peers, their managers, and drill up or down in the org chart. If the person’s profile is properly populated, you can find things like where they sit in the company and what skills they have.

Give Who a try! And while you’re at it, look around at some of the other apps to see what else you may find useful. Lastly, if you’re interested in learning what else Teams can do, please feel free to reach out to us with any questions.