Messages in bot conversations - Teams (2024)

Each message in a conversation is an Activity object of type messageType: message. When a user sends a message, Teams posts the message to your bot. Teams sends a JSON object to your bot's messaging endpoint. Your bot examines the message to determine its type and responds accordingly.

Basic conversations are handled through the Bot Framework connector, a single REST API. This API enables your bot to communicate with Teams and other channels. The Bot Builder SDK provides the following features:

• Easy access to the Bot Framework connector.
• Additional functionality to manage conversation flow and state.
• Simple ways to incorporate cognitive services, such as natural language processing (NLP).

Your bot receives messages from Teams using the Text property and it sends single or multiple message responses to the users.

For more information, see User attribution for bot messages

Receive a message

To receive a text message, use the Text property of the Activity object. In the bot's activity handler, use the turn context object's Activity to read a single message request.

The following code shows an example of receiving a message:

protected override async Task OnMessageActivityAsync(ITurnContext<IMessageActivity> turnContext, CancellationToken cancellationToken){ await turnContext.SendActivityAsync(MessageFactory.Text($"Echo: {turnContext.Activity.Text}"), cancellationToken);}

Send a message

To send a text message, specify the string you want to send as the activity. In the bot's activity handler, use the turn context object's SendActivityAsync method to send a single message response. Use the object's SendActivitiesAsync method to send multiple responses at once.

The following code shows an example of sending a message when a user is added to a conversation:

protected override async Task OnMembersAddedAsync(IList<ChannelAccount> membersAdded, ITurnContext<IConversationUpdateActivity> turnContext, CancellationToken cancellationToken){ await turnContext.SendActivityAsync(MessageFactory.Text($"Hello and welcome!"), cancellationToken);}

Messages sent between users and bots include internal channel data within the message. This data allows the bot to communicate properly on that channel. The Bot Builder SDK allows you to modify the message structure.

Send suggested actions

Suggested actions enable your bot to present buttons that the user can select to provide input. Suggested actions enhance user experience by enabling the user to answer a question or make a choice with selection of a button, rather than typing a response with a keyboard.The buttons remain visible and accessible to the user in the rich cards even after user makes a selection whereas for suggested actions, buttons aren't available. This prevents the user from selection of stale buttons within a conversation.

To add suggested actions to a message, set the suggestedActions property of the Activity object to specify the list of CardAction objects that represent the buttons to be presented to the user. For more information, see SugestedActions

The following is an example for implementation and experience of suggested actions:

"suggestedActions": { "actions": [ { "type": "imBack", "title": "Action 1", "value": "Action 1" }, { "type": "imBack", "title": "Action 2", "value": "Action 2" } ], "to": [<list of recepientIds>] }

Teams channel data

The channelData object contains Teams-specific information and is a definitive source for team and channel IDs. Optionally, you can cache and use these IDs as keys for local storage. The TeamsActivityHandler in the SDK pulls out important information from the channelData object to make it easily accessible. However, you can always access the original data from the turnContext object.

The channelData object isn't included in messages in personal conversations, as these take place outside of a channel.

A typical channelData object in an activity sent to your bot contains the following information:

• eventType: Teams event type passed only in cases of channel modification events.
• tenant.id: Microsoft Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) tenant ID passed in all contexts.
• team: Passed only in channel contexts, not in personal chat.
  • id: GUID for the channel.
  • name: Name of the team passed only in cases of team rename events.
• channel: Passed only in channel contexts, when the bot is mentioned or for events in channels in teams, where the bot has been added.
  • id: GUID for the channel.
  • name: Channel name passed only in cases of channel modification events.
• channelData.teamsTeamId: Deprecated. This property is only included for backward compatibility.
• channelData.teamsChannelId: Deprecated. This property is only included for backward compatibility.

Example channelData object (channelCreated event)

The following code shows an example of channelData object:

"channelData": { "eventType": "channelCreated", "tenant": { "id": "72f988bf-86f1-41af-91ab-2d7cd011db47" }, "channel": { "id": "19:693ecdb923ac4458a5c23661b505fc84@thread.skype", "name": "My New Channel" }, "team": { "id": "19:693ecdb923ac4458a5c23661b505fc84@thread.skype" }}

Message content

Messages received from or sent to your bot can include different types of message content.

Notifications to your message

You can also add notifications to your message using the Notification.Alert property. Notifications alert users about new tasks, mentions, and comments. These alerts are related to what users are working on or what they must look at by inserting a notice into their activity feed. For notifications to trigger from your bot message, set the TeamsChannelData objects Notification.Alert property to true. Whether or not a notification is raised depends on the individual user's Teams settings and you can't override these settings. The notification type is either a banner, or both a banner and an email.

The following code shows an example of adding notifications to your message:

protected override async Task OnMessageActivityAsync(ITurnContext<IMessageActivity> turnContext, CancellationToken cancellationToken){ var message = MessageFactory.Text("You'll get a notification, if you've turned them on."); message.TeamsNotifyUser(); await turnContext.SendActivityAsync(message);}

To enhance your message, you can include pictures as attachments to that message.

Picture messages

Pictures are sent by adding attachments to a message. For more information on attachments, see add media attachments to messages.

Pictures can be at most 1024×1024 MB and 1 MB in PNG, JPEG, or GIF format. Animated GIF isn't supported.

Specify the height and width of each image by using XML. In markdown, the image size defaults to 256×256. For example:

• Use: <img src="http://aka.ms/Fo983c" alt="Duck on a rock" height="150" width="223"></img>.
• Don't use: ![Duck on a rock](http://aka.ms/Fo983c).

A conversational bot can include Adaptive Cards that simplify business workflows. Adaptive Cards offer rich customizable text, speech, images, buttons, and input fields.

Adaptive Cards

Adaptive Cards can be authored in a bot and shown in multiple apps such as Teams, your website, and so on. For more information, see Adaptive Cards.

The following code shows an example of sending a simple Adaptive Card:

{ "type": "AdaptiveCard", "$schema": "http://adaptivecards.io/schemas/adaptive-card.json", "version": "1.5", "body": [ { "items": [ { "size": "large", "text": " Simple Adaptivecard Example with a Textbox", "type": "TextBlock", "weight": "bolder", "wrap": true }, ], "spacing": "extraLarge", "type": "Container", "verticalContentAlignment": "center" } ]}

Form completion feedback

Form completion message appears in Adaptive Cards while sending a response to the bot. The message can be of two types, error or success:

• Error: When a response sent to the bot is unsuccessful, Something went wrong, Try again message appears.

  

• Success: When a response sent to the bot is successful, Your response was sent to the app message appears.

  

  You can select Close or switch chat to dismiss the message.

  If you don't want to display the success message, set the attribute hide to true in the msTeams feedback property. Following is an example:

   "content": { "type": "AdaptiveCard", "title": "Card with hidden footer messages", "version": "1.0", "actions": [ { "type": "Action.Submit", "title": "Submit", "msTeams": { "feedback": { "hide": true } } } ] } 

For more information on cards and cards in bots, see cards documentation.

Status code responses

Following are the status codes and their error code and message values:

Code sample

Next step

See also

• Send proactive messages
• Subscribe to conversation events
• Send and receive files through the bot
• Send tenant ID and conversation ID to the request headers of the bot