I am new in Teams & Bot world, and I have some basic doubts, after reading in the docu and testing its samples.
I have 2 projects running in my Visual Studio:
Echo Bot from Bot Framefork
HelloWorld app from Teams Samples (with an 'EchoBot' inside)
I can see that Activities from Teams are managed in a different way:
ActivityHandler with OnMessageActivityAsync, where each message is received:
protected override async Task OnMessageActivityAsync(ITurnContext turnContext...
ApiController with Post method:
Task Post([FromBody] Activity activity)
but 1 manages Microsoft.Bot.Schema.IActivity
and 2 manages Microsoft.Bot.Connector.IActivity
Maybe it sounds basic, but where can I find a simple explanation about these 2 different ways to manage incoming messages and creating responses/updates,...?
My goal is to have an application with Message Extension (like in 2), to get commands from TEAMS (with #MyApp...), but I need to send activities like Cards (like in 1).
I need to reply (Reply1) an incoming message from a user (Message1), and when I finish a local task, add another reply to the same message (Reply2 to Message1). Both are not new messages, but sent in the same "thread"
With these requirements, what is my best start point?
Thanks a lot,
Diego
Related
Is there a possibility to send a user message to specified user(s) in MS Teams?
Elaboration:
My current flow triggers a message to a user, but it is always sent via FlowBot and appears in the Power Automate chat of MS Teams.
Flow: (Outlook; Trigger) "When a new email arrives (V3)" → (MS Teams) "Post message in chat or channel" → (Outlook) "Mark as read or unread" (v3)
Can individual users be set as recipients of direct messages with the message sent in the already existing chat with the user?
If yes, is it possible without a value chain?
Thanks!
As I see it, there are kind of a few different questions in your post, so I'll try deal with each of them:
In order to send a message directly to a user, the user has to come "from" someone/something, and in Teams that basically means a Bot. The easiest way, therefore, to do this is to use the out-of-box FlowBot. If that's fine for you, you're good to go. If you want it to come from another Bot (i.e. one you own) then you need to create a Bot somehow. Two main options are:
Code it from scratch using Microsoft Bot Framework - code in a regular language (C#, Python, etc.) or using Bot Framework Composer
Use Power Virtual Agents - ala "Power" family, it's kind of a "Drag and Drop" bot capability. You don't need to actually have the bot DO anything though, if you don't want it to handle user responses (you can do most of that visually in your Power Automate flow. For this option, you'll be able to select the bot from within Power Automate designer as the "send from" bot
You can choose to have the bot send a message directly to the user (i.e. in a 1-1 chat, like what you're seeing with FlowBot) or you can choose to have it send to a particular Channel inside Teams - either is fine. Be aware that Channels have threaded conversations, if you want to use them, but 1-1 chats do not.
You can try these Power Automate steps to create the 1:1 chat between you and the user, then send a message to it.
I would like to implement the following Scenario:
Within a Meeting that should take place in the real world in a room (not necessarily within MS Teams), I want a Microsoft Azure Chat bot to post a message to the meeting-chat, without someone having to add the bot to that meeting chat.
I noticed, that real proactive messaging to MS Teams is still not possible, a workaround is necessary: Catching a conversation reference including the users teams-chat-id while he adds the bot e.g. via personal teams app. This works good, if the teams app is pushed to all users within an organization via policies.
This workaround however is not possible within a meeting-chat, that might not exist at the time the bot should write to it. So, no possibility to catch a conversation reference to post to.
Also, I noticed that there does not even exist a MS Graph endpoint neither a connector within Logic apps to post a teams message to several users without cannel-context.
Do you see any workaround for this scenario, or is it simply not supported?
To my knowledge, you're right on both accounts - a bot can't proactively message a chat that it's not part of, and I don't think Graph supports messaging to group chats altogether, which is your scenario.
Just on a point of correctness though, a bot can proactively message (a) individual users (1-1), (b) group chats, and (c) Team channels, each separately (i.e. it does not need to be installed by each user, and message each user privately, unless that is the desired scenario. All that's required for each of these is the relevant "conversationid" that represents the specific conversation, and the ServiceUrl.
I have created a bot by following the steps mentioned in the doc.I have authenticated user using oauth 2.0 (auth code grant) as mentioned in the doc and in reverse I got a access token. But when I send message to channel in the teams using (/teams/{id}/channels/{id}/messages) API the message was sent on behalf of me. But I want my bot as the sender of message. Here is the image of the message that I have sent using the above API. and is there any way to send direct message to user as a bot?
Instead of using the Graph, there's another approach using the Bot Framework itself, to send a message to a team channel, a group chat, or a 1-1 conversation. The code doesn't even need to live inside the bot itself, it just needs to leverage the bot framework under the covers (for example, I have several Azure Functions that pro-actively message users). This idea is called "Proactive messaging" and you can read more about it in the docs here.
You do need to get certain fields when the user first installs the bot though, or any time the bot receives a message. I've described that more at Programmatically sending a message to a bot in Microsoft Teams. You haven't said what language you're using, but there are examples for a bunch of them - I can send you links if you let me know what you're using.
We need to automate few notifications from our web application. These get triggered at various phases, for eg. Step A, B or C would trigger emails to specific parties.
AS an improvisation to this, teams integration is being looked at where a specific channel is being created and with webhook, the messages can be posted.
I created a custom channel with an incoming webhook and I posted a JSON request (of type #messagecard) which was viewable in the channel. But the need is to really establish a conversation and not separate individual messages. By conversation, we mean a scenario or tree structure like below
OverAll status 1 (Parent message)
--> subsequent reply (child message)
---> subsequent reply (child message)
I did some R&D and found that the incoming webhook post request does not return any message id (thsi feature doesnt exist)
What I do not understand is how bots (Azure or Microsoft) can help here.
Please advise
Webhooks/connectors is perfectly fine for the single messages, are you're seeing, but I don't think it will give you the ability to create and then continue an existing "conversation" (i.e. a thread). You certainly could achieve something like this using a "bot"-based approach. In practice, it's kind of "bot+extra" because you need two things:
1) A bot registered into the channel. This will give you some key info you need to be able to send messages from outside Teams - something called a "proactive" message. Having the bot in the channel also means you have something with the authorization to send a message to the channel
2) Next you need to implement the Proactive message. Have a look at my answer here to see more: Programmatically sending a message to a bot in Microsoft Teams (the answer is in C# - not sure what language/platform you're using, but the same concepts apply in Node)
In addition to the pro-active message, once you send that first message, you need to store the message reference that comes back from "SendToConversationAsync". You then apply it to the subsequent messages, as I've described in the answer here: How to add a mention in Teams alongside an adaptive card using Bot Framework
Hope that helps
Let's think of the following example:
1) I have a certain bot deployed on Azure
2) Bot can be talked via Facebook Messenger and via Skype
3) A certain user talks to the bot via Facebook Messenger and then he leaves.
4)A couple of minutes ago the same user resumes the conversation with the bot, but via Skype.
Is this possible? I assume Bot Framework doesn't have anything included for this, hence, that this isn't posible (as conversations are independent and state changes depending on the channel). Is there any way to identify a user (via some authentication method maybe), and then making this logic again?
Do any of you know any workaround for this?
Thanks in advance!
The Bot Framework Connector service is a component which provides a single API for your bot to communicate across multiple client services such as Skype, Email, Slack. Every bot and user has an account within each channel.
The channel account contains an identifier (id) and other informative bot non-structural data, like an optional name.
And there us unique conversation ID created for each conversation of each user for each channel. And you can customize your channel capabilities as described here.
Regards,
Jyo