ms teams custom app starting a chat session with a bot - bots

I'm building a teams app that contains some tabs and a bot.
Is it possible to, when an action is performed on a tab (i.e. clicking a button), initialize automatically a chat with the bot, or send a specific message?
Tks

Based on the comments above, what you're looking to do is implement "pro-active" messaging, where the bot itself initiates the conversation. It's definitely possible, and you can read more to get started here and here. The most important thing to know is that your user has to have installed the bot already, to get a "conversation context", but if they've installed the app, which includes the bot, to get the tab, then you're fine. You need to get some variables when they do install the app, which you hook into the conversationUpdate event to get access to. Give it a go and let me know if you have specific questions, here on SOverflow.

Related

How to proactively send a message to a teams channel

I can't seem to figure out how to proactively message a MS teams channel using a Python Bot (botframework).
An user installs my third-party MS teams bot, adding it to one of their Teams channels.
My Bot needs to send ad-hoc messages as part of an event from an unrelated back-end system.
The botframework does not let you message channels at will, it needs a conversation reference. You can get a conversation reference in various ways, such as someone messaging the bot, or fetching the list of channels and constructing a conversationId from that.
Reading the documentation
The documentation will have you believe that it is in fact possible to send message at will, using the following steps:
Get the user ID or team/channel ID (if needed).
Create the conversation or conversation thread (if needed).
Get the conversation ID.
Send the message.
For step 1, how/when do I get the channel ID if there are no events that my Bot has been added to a channel?
For step 2, how do I create a conversation if I don't know what team channels there are?
Conclusion
Does someone know how to send a message to a MS Teams channel using a Python app/bot? It should not require user interaction. The app/bot gets added to a Teams channel, and it should immediately post a message inside this channel.
Turns out the issue was that my on_teams_members_added() was not getting called because I kept deleting the app within Teams instead of uninstalling.
Make sure to:
Click on the ... overflow menu next to the team name
Pick Manage Team
Select the "Apps" tab
Click the trash icon to remove the app from that team
Then try to install the app again
With this code you can send a channel message when the Bot enters the channel:
async def on_teams_members_added( # pylint: disable=unused-argument
self,
teams_members_added: [TeamsChannelAccount],
team_info: TeamInfo,
turn_context: TurnContext,
):
for member in teams_members_added:
if member.id == turn_context.activity.recipient.id and team_info is not None:
# bot entered a Teams channel
await turn_context.send_activity("Hello channel! I have just been added.")
Your handler needs to inherit from TeamsActivityHandler.
I'm working on a sample for the pnp Teams samples repo on GitHub that I'm hoping to submit in the next few days. I haven't started on the documentation yet, but the code is fully functional, with both a C# and a Node.js version of the backend, which sends a -very- simple proactive message example (showing the most basic things you need) - hopefully it can be of use even though it's not in Python - see https://github.com/HiltonGiesenow/teams-dev-samples/tree/add-proactive-messaging-sample/samples/bot-proactive-messaging/src

Why doesn't the Azure Bot Service Slack connector forward Events and Interactive Messages?

Update: June 30, 2020
After more testing, I have details that might help someone recognize my problem.
The issue seems to be that Slack is sending data to Azure Bot Services, but that data isn't being forwarded to my code. Ive been able to use the Bot Emulator without any problems and the Azure Web Chat works fine.
I know that the Slack configuration for the OAuth Redirect URL is correct (I was able to add my bot to Slack) and the Request URL for Events is correct (they sent the 'challenge' and it's verified). I've subscribed to the exact Scopes and Events that are in the Microsoft documentation and I've verified that the Interactivity and Events options are enabled.
When a user types text in my bot's Slack channel, my app receives "message" activity and my code can send a response, so it looks like Microsoft can communicate end-to-end for normal messages. I do not receive any data when users first join my bot (like a ConversationUpdate) or if they click a button in a dialog. I can see Slack sending data when a button is pressed, it just never arrives.
As a test, I copied the Messaging Endpoint from my Azure bot settings and pasted it into Slack's Interactivity "Request URL" and when I click a button in Slack I can see the data that Slack is sending (sadly in a format that my code can't handle).
Original Post
I have a Bot Framework app (v4) that I've written in nodejs. It works well and I have an ActivityHandler that responds to people being added to a conversation and when they send messages. I was able to get pro-active messaging functioning and everything was great until I tried to get interactivity working.
I started off using some sample button code from Microsoft's documentation:
let reply = MessageFactory.suggestedActions(['Red', 'Yellow', 'Blue'], 'What is the best color?');
await turnContext.sendActivity(reply);
This works fine in the emulator, but in Slack it renders as a bulleted list. It looks like that's the way that "suggested actions" are handled in Slack.
I changed my code to use a "hero card":
let card = CardFactory.heroCard(
'What is the best color?',
undefined,
CardFactory.actions([
{
type: 'imBack',
title: 'Color Red',
value: 'Red Value'
}
])
);
let reply = MessageFactory.attachment(card);
await turnContext.sendActivity(reply);
This works okay in the emulator, except my app thinks the user typed "Red Value" and the button stays on-screen and is still clickable. I might be able to work around that, but the button doesn't work at all in Slack. It is rendered fine, but I don't get a notification in my app.
Clicking the button shows an HTTP request to:
https://{MY_SLACK}.slack.com/api/chat.attachmentAction?_x_id=f8d003c3-1592436018.632&_x_csid=NcWi3y50lFU&slack_route={OTHER_SLACK_STUFF}
And I can see that the request POSTs all sorts of data including:
payload: {"actions":[{"id":"1","name":"imBack","text":"Color Red","type":"button","value":"Red Value","style":"default"}],"attachment_id":"2","callback_id":"{MAGIC_NUMBER}:{TEAM_ID}","channel_id":"{CHANNEL_ID}","message_ts":"1592435983.056000","prompt_app_install":false,"team_id":"{TEAM_ID}"}
I'm not sure how to see anything useful in the Azure Portal - the analytics option for my bot doesn't seem to work and the activities option only says "Write a Bot Service". I don't see any sign of the message going from Slack to Azure.
I'm developing locally and configured ngrok so that my messaging endpoint in Azure could be set to https://69fe1382ce17.ngrok.io/api/messages On the Slack side of things, I've configured the Interactivity Request URL to be https://slack.botframework.com/api/Actions The Event Subscription Request URL is https://slack.botframework.com/api/Events/{MY_BOT_NAME}
What I would like is a set of buttons with different options and when the user clicks one, my bot gets some sort of "value" instead of message text. I'd also like for the button to go away so the user can't send repeated commands. It would be nice if the hero card collapsed with just the prompt being displayed.
Are there any interactive options that work for Slack and other channels?
Thanks!
Lee
I know linking to another site with no additional detail is frowned upon, but I don't have enough expertise to answer your question. I suspect the link here might move you in the right direction:
Choice Prompts are not translated over to Slack format #3974
Good luck!
Your question is multifaceted so I'll try to break it down into smaller pieces.
What's the deal with suggested actions in Slack?
Suggested actions are not supported in Slack, but the Bot Builder SDK thinks they are. This is a longstanding bug. I've just reported it again on the docs page you linked: https://github.com/MicrosoftDocs/bot-docs/issues/1742
This means you would encounter problems if you were trying to have the choice factory automatically generate the right kind of choices for your channel. You're not doing that, so you should be fine. Hero cards are supposed to work in Slack.
Why aren't hero cards working in Slack?
First I need to mention that hero cards only work with the Slack connector and not the Slack adapter. You seem to be using the connector so you should be fine.
I suspect your problem is related to how you've configured your bot's settings on the Slack side. There is a step in the Bot Framework doc that seems to be important if you want to get buttons to work. If you've followed the doc exactly and you still can't get buttons to work, it may be worthwhile to dig into the Slack API documentation.
How do I only allow a button to be clicked once?
You can update or delete the activity. There's no easy way to do this, but if you voice your support for my cards library then it can be done for you automatically.
The Slack connector actually puts a lot of relevant information in the incoming activity's channel data, and you can use that to figure out what activity the incoming activity came from. That would take some experimentation on your part.
There's another approach that works on more channels than just Slack. It's real complicated, but if you wanna tackle this then here are the basic steps:
You need to put an ID in the action data to help your bot identify the action.
You need to save the activity ID that gets returned when you send the action to Slack.
You need to associate the returned activity ID with the ID you put in the action data.
You need to retrieve the activity ID using the action data ID when the user clicks the button.
You need to use that activity ID to update or delete the activity.
Unfortunately there's no centralized guide to help you do this, but there are many examples explaining it scattered across Stack Overflow. Here is a good one: https://stackoverflow.com/a/55174866/2122672

send typing notification in MSBOT framework in node.js

I have developed a bot in Bot framework. Once user responds to the bot and bot is processing it, i need to show the typing indicator to the user in the meanwhile for every 2 seconds . It should be working across all conversations of the chat.
Easy as pie. Node.js bots send a typing indicator to the user by executing session.SendTyping();
If you want to see what this looks like in the framework, you can find the code here
Also, Microsoft has a documentation page that talks specifically about this.

Chat messages from Dialogflow don't appear in Slack

I'm creating a bot with Dialogflow. It's quite straigtforward, and it worked on Telegram in no time. But things complicated when trying to integrate Dialogflow with Slack.
My bot is able to read direct messages from Slack, and I'm sure of it because the messages from Slack appear in the History section of Dialogflow. Good news there. In the same screen, I can see that Dialogflow answered all the messages Slack sent to it. But sadly, those answers don't appear in Slack.
By the way, just to confuse me more, the Dialogflow's test bot works flawlessly with Slack, publishing there with no issue. So, it's not anything related with the common values you have to copy from Slack and paste to Dialogflow to enable the integration.
It seems that my bot on Slack misses some kind of permission of the OAuth & Permissions screen, but I've tried some of theme, and I can't find the good one. Right now I'm using bot, chat:write:bot, im:write, and channels:read. I guess that only the two first ones are needed, but I'm totally lost and tried adding permissions with no reason. And then, I wrote this post.
Is there someone who has a simple bot that sends messages in direct messages on Slack? What are the needed permissions?
I had the same issue, it's quite easy to solve: just go on Manage Distribution in your bot's Slack API panel and click on the "Add to Slack" button.
That's all!
Under OAuth & Permissions, add "chat:write" to OAuth Scope. That will allow your bot to send messages to other users.

An issue when authorizing Facebook pages in Bot Framework

The issue originates from the bot framework itself, when I add a new Facebook channel for the first time everything works as expected, what I am trying to do is connecting multiple FB pages to the same bot, I read somewhere that you can do this by re-entering the page info and clicking "resubmit", the problem is when the "resubmit" button is clicked without first clicking "Deauthorize" first causes a problem, when I analyzed the request with the browser's inspector it seems that EnableChannelForBot method throws an error.
Also we are developing a service where users can register and link their FB pages to the bot just like ChatFuel or any other famous bot platform, the main problem is that bot framework is asking for a specific page id and access token per FB bot and you must do it manually through the bot framework dashboard, can we have an easy way to register the bot to multiple FB pages and without having to do so manually through an API or something Similar? Please work with us to provide a solution for this as soon as you can, Bot Framework is vital to our work and migrating to another SDK is going to be very costly and time-consuming.
I don't think that connecting multiple Facebook pages to the same bot is supported. Where did you read that?
Also, there is no API currently you can leverage on to register your bot/enable Facebook channel.

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