There is a problem when the user is clicking a postback button and the internet connection is not stable or is reconnecting from the internet. After reconnecting to the internet, it will look like the user has successfully clicked the button (Labeled as Sent) but my webhook is not getting any postback events. So the user does not get any response from my bot unless they click the button again with a stable connection.
I already sent a support ticket to Facebook regarding this. I'm asking help for a workaround this issue, that will continue the conversation or maybe a reminder that the user must click the button again to progress.
I'm using Node.js and Microsoft Bot Framework for this.
While I am unfamiliar with Facebook Messenger for bots, as far as I can tell, a postback button seems to work the same as any other button, with added async functionality. The intermittent internet connection appears to be interrupting that async call. There isn't a work around that I know of, as your bot is still waiting for a response from your user, a response that won't come, if your user thinks they've already sent info to the bot.
I would put a proactive/welcome message in the very beginning of your bot dialog that if the user is connecting with a weak/intermittent internet connection, to resend their response if the bot doesn't respond. If you're using the bot for sales purposes, then a message to not use the bot unless they're using a stable internet connection as they could accidentally send a purchase order twice, would be more appropriate.
Related
Is there a way for the backend to detect the webchat disconnected (ie, user closed page, navigated away, browser quited)?
There seems to be no out-of-the-box event for it. We rolled our own event (store.dispatch({...})) and attached it to the beforeunload event, but since it sends a webrequest, thats not supported.
I was thinking about using navigator.sendBeacon, but that will end up with a lot of unwanted events since that should be used on onVisibilityChanged (thus, webchat can still be active, but on a hidden tab). It seems to me that more people would want to know if the enduser is still active.
Using Botframework
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.
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
I have worked around with RASA + FB messenger.
I'm able to interact with bots on messenger as normal. But when it comes to response as Button (postback). It's not working as I tried to click on response button from bots. If I type it do work.
I check on logs, and local webhook but it got no interaction.
Anyone experience such a case ?
Did you subscribed to postback webhook event in your Developers account?
If not, you have to subscribe for that to receive the postback events.
See the reference: messaging_postbacks Webhook Event Reference
I have a Facebook Messenger bot (written in NodeJS) and a separate control panel where a user can manage the information that the bot is working with (like inventory stock, etc.). One of those things is a log of all conversations between the bot and a visitor. The control panel allows the admin users to send messages to visitors through the bot. There is an input box where they can type in a message and when they click 'Send', the message goes to the bot app, which then sends it back to the user through Send API.
Messages are logged into a database; those going to the bot (from the visitor) are logged when they're received, and those the bot responds with are logged through the 'echo' callback.
The problem with this is that the bot can reply to certain visitor commands (phrases) and tries to perform certain actions based on the input. I'm using Wit.ai for this, but due to the scope of the possible phrases and keywords, the default mode when someone sends a text message is to send it to Wit.ai for processing. However, if an admin user sends the visitor a message from the control panel, the visitor could want to respond to that message (instead of sending a bot command) and that response should not go to the Wit.ai for processing. And due to the sheer scope of possible variations of what can be said, coupled with the fact that they can actually use some of the keywords in the response as well, processing the intent with Wit.ai in that case is too uncertain.
I was wondering if there's a way to somehow identify/mark the source of the messages that the bot sends to the visitor, so when an echo callback comes, I can know if it's, say, from a regular bot routine or from a user-entered reply. Like some additional meta tags that could be sent with the message that would also get returned with the echo, but that doesn't pollute the message itself. Is something like that possible? Or is there a different way I can achieve the same result.
I don't wether that helps you, but Facebook just recently integrated a quite mysterious Tag feature for bots.
https://developers.facebook.com/docs/messenger-platform/send-api-reference/tags