{"id":7005,"date":"2021-07-22T14:43:00","date_gmt":"2021-07-22T21:43:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/insidetrack\/blog\/?p=7005"},"modified":"2023-06-11T13:53:06","modified_gmt":"2023-06-11T20:53:06","slug":"meet-erica-the-microsoft-teams-bot-helping-microsoft-work-faster","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/insidetrack\/blog\/meet-erica-the-microsoft-teams-bot-helping-microsoft-work-faster\/","title":{"rendered":"Meet ERICA, the Microsoft Teams bot helping Microsoft work faster"},"content":{"rendered":"
This content has been archived, and while it was correct at time of publication, it may no longer be accurate or reflect the current situation at Microsoft.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
There\u2019s a new Microsoft Teams bot on the block.<\/p>\n
Specifically, it\u2019s Microsoft Teams audit digitization assistant named ERICA, or Enterprise Risk Investigation Compliance and Audit. Thanks to ERICA\u2019s easy-to-use interface and automated features, Microsoft\u2019s Internal Audit team can quickly access accurate information from a single place.<\/p>\n
\u201cERICA streamlines how we access information,\u201d says Jose De Jesus Sanchez Rico, a senior software engineering manager with the Microsoft Commerce Financial Systems (CFS) team. \u201cIn this case, it gets information for the user, generates documents, and processes the information, automating what auditors used to do manually.\u201d<\/p>\n
An internal audit can review multiple business areas and processes to check controls and report on how risk is managed and whether it is compliant. One test that is commonly performed is determining whether access to key systems is appropriately restricted. In the past, auditors within Microsoft Finance\u2019s Audit Risk and Compliance (ARC) team tracked down, reviewed, and documented access information from several different systems. This sent auditors across multiple portals, websites, and applications to perform a single auditing task.<\/p>\n
Now ERICA creates the Microsoft Excel spreadsheet, doing all that manual work for auditors.<\/p>\n
\u201cPrior to ERICA coming into the picture, auditors had to validate which security groups have access to the application they are testing by switching between a number of applications,\u201d says Michelle Lenssen, a group technology manager within Microsoft ARC\u2019s Strategy and Solutions Technology team. Throughout this process, they would need to screenshot the applications and input their results into a spreadsheet for documentation purposes.\u201d<\/p>\n
ERICA brings a collision and friction-free experience to auditors, allowing them to perform many of their recurring tasks through Microsoft Teams. The Microsoft Teams bot centralizes several important job functions into one location, enabling auditors to populate templates from multiple sources with a few clicks and keystrokes.<\/p>\n