Setting Up a Microsoft Teams REST Connection Manager
The REST Connection Manager is an SSIS connection manager that can be used to establish connections and facilitate data integration with REST based APIs and services such as Microsoft Teams, among many more.
Integration for Microsoft Teams is enabled by the following two components:
To add a new connection, right-click the Connection Manager area in your Visual Studio project, and choose "New Connection..." from the context menu. You will be prompted the "Add SSIS Connection Manager" window. Select the "REST (KingswaySoft)" item to add a new REST Connection Manager.
The REST Connection Manager contains 2 pages of configuration.
- General
- Advanced Settings
General Page
The General page allows you to specify connection properties and login credentials for the Microsoft Teams REST service:
- Service Name
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The REST service that will be connected to.
- API Throttle Rate
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The API Throttling Rate will limit the number of requests that can be sent per second.
- Authentication Mode
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This option allows you to specify the preferred authorization mode to connect to your Microsoft Teams instance. There are two available options:
- OAuth Authorization Code.
- OAuth Client Credentials (service-to-service authentication)
- Sign in using the default web browser (Only available with OAuth Authorization Code authentication):
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When this option is checked the Generate Token File button will open your default web browser in order to complete the OAuth authentication.
When this option is unchecked, the Generate Token File button will complete the entire OAuth authentication process inside of the toolkit.
- Generate Token File
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This button allows you to log in to the service endpoint and authorize your app to generate a token.
- Path To Token File
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The path to the token file on the file system.
- Token File Password
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The password to the token file.
- Tenant Id (Only available with OAuth Client Credentials authentication):
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The Tenant Id option allows you to specify the unique ID which identifies the tenant to which your Microsoft Teams instance belongs.
- Client Id
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The Client Id option allows you to specify the unique ID which identifies the application making the request.
- Client Secret
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The Client Secret option allows you to specify the client secret belonging to your Microsoft Teams app.
- Test Connection
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After all the connection information has been provided, you may click the "Test Connection" button to test if the user credentials entered can connect to the selected REST service.
Advanced Settings Page
- Proxy Mode
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The Proxy Mode option allows you to specify how you want to configure the proxy server setting. There are three options available:
- No Proxy
- Auto-detect (Using system-configured proxy)
- Manual
- Proxy Server
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Using the Proxy Server option allows you to specify the name of the proxy server for the connection.
- Port
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The Port option allows you to specify the port number of the proxy server for the connection.
- Username (Proxy Server Authentication)
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The Username option (under Proxy Server Authentication) allows you to specify the proxy user account.
- Password (Proxy Server Authentication)
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The Password option (under Proxy Server Authentication) allows you to specify the proxy user's password.
Note: The Proxy Password is not included in the connection manager's ConnectionString property by default. This is by design for security reasons. However, you can include it in your ConnectionString if you want to parameterize your connection manager. The format would be ProxyPassword=myProxyPassword; (make sure you have a semicolon as the last character). It can be anywhere in the ConnectionString.
- Timeout
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The number of seconds a request should wait before timing out.
- Retry on Intermittent Errors
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The retry on intermittent errors option determines if requests will be retried when there is an error. If this option is checked requests will be retried up to 3 times.
- Ignore Certificate Errors
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This option can be used to ignore those SSL certificate errors when connecting to Microsoft Teams servers.
Warning: Enabling the "Ignore Certificate Errors" option is generally NOT recommended, particularly for production instances. Unless there is a strong reason to believe the connection is secure - such as the network communication is only happening in an internal infrastructure, this option should be unchecked for best security.