Intercom to Azure Boards, with the code already found
The short answer
Connect Intercom, Azure Boards and your code. When an agent escalates a conversation, Watari works out whether it is a real bug, writes a report an engineer can act on, points to the file and function behind it, and files it in Azure Boards. If it is confident enough it also opens a draft pull request for your engineers to review. Reports of the same bug become one issue. Once the fix is deployed, an update goes back to every conversation that reported it.
What arrives in Azure Boards
- A work item in the project you chose, with the title, description, steps to reproduce, severity, tags, and a link back to the full report in Watari.
- The files and functions most likely to contain the bug, ranked, with the reasoning for each.
- A link to the draft pull request when Watari opened one. Your engineers and your CI decide what merges.
- One issue per bug. When more conversations report the same problem they are attached to the issue that already exists.
- Every item is filed as the work item type you chose, Bug unless you pick another. A feature request carries the behaviour the customer asked for in its description.
Set it up
Connect Intercom
In Watari, open Settings, then Connected tools, and connect Intercom. You approve access on Intercom's own consent screen.
Choose which conversations Watari reads
Pick the trigger team. Only conversations assigned to that team are sent. Until a team is chosen, nothing is sent.
Connect your code
Connect the GitHub or Azure DevOps repository the product lives in. Watari reads it so it can find where a reported bug lives, and never keeps a copy of your source code.
Connect Azure Boards
Connect Azure DevOps and choose the project work items should land in. You can also set the area path, the iteration and the work item type.
Escalate a conversation
An agent assigns the conversation to that team. The bug report, the code it points to and the Azure Boards issue follow without anyone rewriting anything.
Step by step, with screenshots: connect your support tool and choose where issues are filed.
Watari is also listed on the Intercom App Store.
What Watari reads in Intercom
Customer messages, teammate replies and internal notes, tags and custom attributes, and every attachment: screenshots, screen recordings, PDFs, logs and voice notes.
Your agents decide what Watari sees. It reads only the conversations they send, never the whole help desk.
What is filed in Azure Boards
By default Watari files the bugs it is confident about and has located in your code, so Azure Boards does not fill up with guesses. You can switch that to every bug it extracts.
In a public Azure DevOps project, the work item leaves out the customer's own words and links to the report in Watari instead. Your customer's ticket is never published.
Filing in Azure Boards is included in every plan and is never billed.
What the customer hears
Internal notes in the conversation as the issue moves, each with a reply your teammate can send now. They are on by default, you can switch them off, and your customer never sees them. Once the fix is live, one reply in the original conversation. Your team approves the wording first, and it waits for the deploy, so nobody tells a customer something is fixed before it is.
What it does not do
Azure DevOps Services (cloud) only. Azure DevOps Server is not supported yet. Watari creates the work item and does not read its state back.
Watari needs your code on GitHub or Azure DevOps (cloud). GitLab and Bitbucket are not supported yet. If all you need is to link a conversation to an issue by hand, a plain linking app between Intercom and Azure Boards does that, and you do not need Watari for it.
Frequently asked questions
Can a Intercom conversation create a Azure Boards issue automatically, with the customer's message in it?
Yes. An agent assigns the conversation to that team. Watari then files the Azure Boards issue on its own, with the customer's own words in the description, the steps to reproduce and the code it points to. In a public Azure DevOps project, the work item leaves out the customer's own words and links to the report in Watari instead. Your customer's ticket is never published.
How do I send Intercom conversations to Azure Boards?
Connect Intercom, Azure Boards and your repository in Watari, then choose which conversations it reads. From then on, escalating a conversation files a structured bug report in Azure Boards with the code it points to.
Does every Intercom conversation become a Azure Boards issue?
No. Only the conversations your agents escalate reach Watari, and by default only real bugs it has located in your code are filed. A conversation that needs no code change gets a suggested answer for your support team and no issue.
What happens when several customers report the same bug?
They are grouped. Azure Boards gets one issue, and each new conversation is attached to it, so engineering sees the bug once along with how many customers it affects.
Does filing in Azure Boards cost extra?
No. Watari bills for issues it maps to your code. Filing in Azure Boards, draft pull requests and customer updates are included.
Does the customer get an update in Intercom?
Yes. After the fix is merged and deployed, an update your team approved is posted to every conversation that reported the bug.
When a support ticket reports a bug, your engineers get a drafted fix.
Connect your help desk or your issue tracker, then GitHub or Azure DevOps. Watari maps each bug to the exact file and function in your code and drafts the fix as a pull request your CI checks.
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