# How to add Microsoft Teams to Infor VISUAL

> Source: https://netray.co/integrations/infor-visual-microsoft-teams
> Publisher: Netray (netray.co), AI and integration engineering for ERP and manufacturing systems.
> Section: Integrations

## Short answer

To bring Infor VISUAL into Microsoft Teams, build a Teams bot or Power Automate flow that reads VISUAL through its SQL database or API Toolkit and posts adaptive cards for alerts and approvals. Sign-in uses Entra ID, and any action that changes VISUAL data should be tied to a mapped VISUAL user.

## System

Infor VISUAL

## Capability

microsoft-teams

## Intro

A lot of VISUAL customers already live in Microsoft 365. Email, SharePoint and Teams are in place, yet approvals for purchase orders, engineering changes and credit holds still depend on someone opening the VISUAL client or answering a forwarded email.

Teams is a good fit for the low-friction parts: a channel that shows late work orders each morning, a card a manager can approve on a phone, a bot that answers 'what is on hand for part X'. VISUAL does not push events by itself, so a small service has to bridge it.

The main design question is identity. Teams knows people as Entra ID accounts. VISUAL knows them as its own user IDs. Mapping the two cleanly is what makes approvals auditable.

## Use Cases

### Purchase order approval cards

**Description:** A requisition above a threshold posts an adaptive card to the approver with vendor, lines and total, and Approve or Reject buttons.

### Late work order digest

**Description:** Each morning a channel gets a list of work orders past their scheduled finish, grouped by department.

### Stock lookup bot

**Description:** Planners type a part ID in a chat and see on-hand, allocated and on-order quantities by warehouse.

### Customer order hold alerts

**Description:** Sales gets a message when a customer order is placed on credit hold, with a link to the record.

### Quality escalation channel

**Description:** Nonconformance records created in VISUAL create a post in a quality channel for follow-up and acknowledgements.

## System Surface

- SQL Server or Oracle database: read-only queries against order, purchase, work order and inventory tables are the simplest source for alerts. Confirm table and column names against your schema and version.
- VISUAL API Toolkit: a programmatic way to create or update objects under VISUAL business rules, subject to your version and licensing.
- VISUAL user security: VISUAL maintains its own users and permissions, so a mapping table from Entra ID user to VISUAL user is needed for write actions.
- Reports and exports: Visual Report Writer or Crystal output to a file share can feed a digest when direct database access is not permitted.
- No standard outbound events: expect polling or database triggers to detect changes, since VISUAL does not provide a general event bus.

## How It Works

### Choose bot or flow

**Detail:** For a few alerts, Power Automate with an on-premises data gateway to SQL Server may be enough. For two-way approvals and chat, build a bot with the Teams platform.

### Register an Entra ID app

**Detail:** Register the bot, grant only the Graph and Teams scopes it needs, and use a certificate or managed secret rather than a shared password.

### Build the VISUAL connector

**Detail:** Create a read-only SQL account for lookups. For approvals, write through the API Toolkit using a service identity with narrow rights.

### Map identities

**Detail:** Keep a table linking Entra ID object IDs to VISUAL user IDs and to approval limits. Refuse an approval when no mapping exists.

### Design adaptive cards

**Detail:** Keep cards short: key facts, a link back to the VISUAL record, and one or two actions. Update the card after the action so it cannot be clicked twice.

### Log and monitor

**Detail:** Record who clicked what and when, and alert when the poller falls behind or the VISUAL connection fails.

## Example Flows

### PO approval from a phone

**Trigger:** A purchase order passes the approval threshold in VISUAL.

**Steps:**

- The poller finds the new PO and fetches header and lines.
- The bot sends an adaptive card to the mapped approver.
- The approver taps Approve.
- The service checks their limit and writes the approval through the supported interface.

**Result:** The PO releases the same day without the approver opening the VISUAL client.

### Morning shop digest

**Trigger:** A timer fires at 6:30 each weekday.

**Steps:**

- A query lists open work orders with finish dates before today.
- Results are grouped by department and sorted by customer due date.
- One card per department is posted to its channel.

**Result:** Supervisors start the shift with the same list instead of building their own.

## On Prem

Teams is a cloud service but your VISUAL database can stay entirely on-premises. Run the bot's back end on a server inside your network or in a private cloud, and let it connect outward to Microsoft. If you use Power Automate, the on-premises data gateway keeps SQL access inside your network. When you add natural-language questions in chat, point them at a local open-weight model so part numbers, costs and customer names are not sent to a public API. Answer queries from a read-only replica when the production database is already under load.

## Security

- Authenticate Teams users through Entra ID and require a mapped VISUAL user for any write.
- Enforce approval limits in the service, not only in the card.
- Use a read-only database account for all lookups and keep write credentials in a secret store.
- Hide sensitive fields such as cost and margin from channels with broad membership.
- Keep an audit trail linking each card action to the Entra ID user and the VISUAL record.

## Options

### Power Automate with data gateway

**Fit:** Good for scheduled alerts and simple approvals where the logic fits a flow and users are comfortable with Microsoft low-code tools.

**Effort:** Days

### Custom Teams bot

**Fit:** Best for chat lookups, richer cards and strict identity mapping, if you have developers who can maintain it.

**Effort:** Several weeks

### Partner build with Netray

**Fit:** Suited to a bot that answers questions in plain English using a local model and routes writes through approval.

**Effort:** A few weeks for a first scoped bot

## Pitfalls

- Posting approvals to a shared channel where anyone can click.
- Skipping the identity mapping and writing everything as one service user.
- Overloading a channel with alerts until people mute it.
- Running heavy lookups directly on the production database during the shift.
- Forgetting to update or expire cards after a PO has already been approved elsewhere.

## Faq

### Is there an official Infor VISUAL Teams app?

**Answer:** I am not aware of a standard one, and availability can change by version, so ask Infor or your reseller. In practice most teams build a small bot or Power Automate flow over the VISUAL database or API Toolkit, then add identity mapping for approvals.

### Can Power Automate connect to VISUAL?

**Answer:** Usually through the SQL Server connector with an on-premises data gateway, which gives read access to tables. Writes should go through a supported interface rather than direct updates, since VISUAL business rules live in the application and not only in the database.

### How are approvals kept auditable?

**Answer:** Map each Entra ID user to a VISUAL user and approval limit, log the card action with a timestamp, and write the approval through the same service identity every time. The log plus the VISUAL record then shows who approved what.

### Can users ask questions in plain English?

**Answer:** Yes. A bot can translate a question into a fixed, safe query, such as on-hand by part, and return the result. For sensitive data, run the language model locally and restrict it to approved read-only queries with row-level checks.

### Does this need VISUAL in the cloud?

**Answer:** No. The bot back end can sit next to an on-premises VISUAL server and connect outward to Microsoft. You only need outbound HTTPS from that server, plus whatever inbound path your Teams bot registration requires, which can be a reverse proxy in a DMZ.

## Search terms

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