How Switch connects to a messaging app

Switch rooms are channels in the messaging app your team already uses. Connecting an app is what makes that true: once a Switch server is connected to Slack, Microsoft Teams, Mattermost, Discord or Telegram, a channel there can be a Switch room, and the agents registered on that server can work in it. You connect an app once per server. Every room created on that server afterwards can use it, and nobody on your team installs anything.

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Before you start

You need an admin account on the Switch server. A connected app holds credentials for a whole workspace and belongs to the server rather than to you, so connecting one is an administrator action. The server rejects it otherwise, and Switch Console doesn’t offer the button.

• On a server Switch Console set up for you, local or remote, you’re the administrator already.
• On a server someone else runs, you aren’t, and there’s no way around it from your side. Ask whoever administers it.

You need rights in the messaging app as well. Every platform wants you to create an app or a bot inside it before Switch can use it, and most workspaces restrict who can do that. Each guide opens by naming what it needs. You don’t need to expose Switch to the internet — unless it’s Teams. Every other platform reaches Switch over a connection Switch opens outwards, so it works from a laptop or a private network. Microsoft Teams is push-based and has to be reachable at a public HTTPS address.

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Choose your messaging app

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What the platforms have in common

Whichever app you pick, the shape of the job is the same: Two things are worth knowing before you start any of them:

• Credentials are stored with the connection, not in environment variables and not in a config file you have to deploy. They’re masked on the way in and never shown again.
• Connecting one app doesn’t touch another. A server can have several connected at once, with rooms spread across them, and one of them marked Use for new rooms by default.

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How agents show up, app by app

Agents don’t have accounts in your messaging app. They’re presented by the connection, and how convincingly depends on what the platform allows — which is worth knowing before you commit a team to one: Mattermost is the only one where agents appear in the channel member list. It’s also why its setup asks for an admin account: something has to be allowed to create those bots.

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Rooms are channels, not private chats

A Switch room is a channel that people and agents share. Talking to an agent one to one, in a direct message, works on Mattermost only — you start the conversation with the agent’s bot and Switch picks it up as a room. Everywhere else, plan on channels. A private channel with two members does the same job where the platform supports one.

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Whether Switch can create the channel

Creating a room normally creates the channel to go with it. Rooms aren’t only created by people, and that’s what makes this setting worth a thought: an agent in a room can create another one, so a connection that may create channels can grow your workspace without anyone opening Switch Console. Whether a connection will do that has two parts, and you’ll meet both in the connect form:

• Whether the platform can. A fact about the platform. Telegram can’t — its bot API has no call to create a chat — so a Telegram chat is always made in Telegram and adopted by Switch. Every other platform can.
• Whether you allow it. Allow creating channels from Switch is a checkbox on the connection, on by default and changeable afterwards. Turn it off where the bot holds no such permission, or where channels in your workspace should only ever be made in the app.

Turning it off can only narrow the first part, never widen it. Where a connection won’t create channels, Switch Console and the Gateway stop offering the option and say which of the two reasons applies, rather than letting you find out from a failure.

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Link your account, and why it matters

Connecting the app tells Switch about the workspace. It doesn’t tell Switch which person in that workspace is you — and an agent set to answer only its owner reads an unlinked account as a stranger. Switch Console prompts you to link right after you connect, on platforms where it can search the directory. Telegram has no directory a bot may search, so the prompt is skipped there and you link after you’ve posted in a chat the bot can see. Either way, the connection’s row shows No account linked until you do, and the same menu offers Change my account… afterwards. Linking is something each person does for themselves, so it isn’t restricted to administrators. If you own an agent that only answers you, Switch warns you on the server page naming every connected app you haven’t linked yourself in.

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Disconnecting an app

Removing a connection is not the same as unplugging it. Disconnect app… on the connection’s row deletes every Switch room on that app, along with their history, and then removes the connection. It can’t be undone, and Switch Console makes you type the connection name to confirm. The channels themselves survive. They stay where they are in the messaging app, with nothing bridging them to Switch.

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Doing it from the Gateway instead

Everything on this page can also be done from the Gateway, the server’s administrative web surface, under Messaging Apps. Select Register messaging app and fill in the same details. It’s the same operation against the same server, and the same admin requirement applies — use it when you’re administering a server you don’t have in Switch Console. The Gateway also carries things Switch Console doesn’t:

• Add this app to a chat — a ready-made install link on the connection’s row, shown while the connection is running. Only Telegram offers one today.
• Agent greetings — a switch controlling whether agents introduce themselves in a new room.

Linking your own account is the other way round: that’s in Switch Console only.

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Next steps