Before
Users likely had to open the cloud portal, locate the correct subscription and virtual machine, identify its resource group, and perform the requested start, stop, restart, reimage, or resize action manually. Resize requests also required looking up available sizes and coordinating the target selection before returning to the conversation to report the result.
How it works
- Receive the conversation request, interpret the intended virtual machine action, and determine whether the VM name or resize target is present.
- Retrieve subscriptions and virtual machine details, then prompt the user with interactive choices when the VM or target size is missing.
- Route the confirmed request to the appropriate virtual machine operation and post the resulting status message in the originating conversation.
Workflow details
- Request intake: A webhook receives a message or interactive response from a team conversation, and an AI-driven analysis identifies the requested virtual machine action along with any supplied VM name or target size.
- Resource discovery: The workflow retrieves subscription information, lists the available virtual machines, and extracts the selected VM's resource group so the requested operation can be directed to the correct resource.
- Interactive selection: If the VM name is missing, the workflow posts an interactive list of available VM names for the user to choose from. For resize requests without a target size, it retrieves available sizes, identifies the two neighboring options around the current size, and presents them for selection.
- Action execution: Conditional routing separates Start, Stop, Restart, Reimage, and Resize requests, then invokes the corresponding virtual machine operation. Resize requests use the user's selected size to construct the update action.
- Conversation update: After the operation path completes, the workflow generates an action-specific status message and delivers it back to the original conversation thread, keeping the request and its outcome together.
What changed
Virtual machine operations can now be initiated from the conversation itself. The workflow performs resource lookup, action routing, and resize-option selection automatically, while the user only provides a missing VM or size choice when prompted and receives the status in the same thread.
Work removed
Manually opening the cloud portal, locating subscriptions and VM names, finding the VM resource group, checking available resize options, copying resource details between tools, selecting the correct operation, and posting a completion update in the conversation.
Expected outcome
Each request can remove at least three recurring lookup or routing actions—subscription discovery, VM identification, and operation selection—with resize requests also avoiding a separate manual size lookup.
