Add trace activities to your bot

APPLIES TO: SDK v4

A trace activity is an activity that your bot can send to the Bot Framework Emulator. You can use trace activities to interactively debug a bot, as they allow you to view information about your bot while it runs locally.

Trace activities are sent only to the Emulator and not to any other client or channel. The Emulator displays them in the log but not the main chat panel.

• Trace activities sent via the turn context are sent through the send activity handlers registered on the turn context.
• Trace activities sent via the turn context are associated with the inbound activity, by applying the conversation reference, if there was one. For a proactive message, the reply to ID will be a new GUID.
• Regardless of how it's sent, a trace activity never sets the responded flag.

Note

The Bot Framework JavaScript, C#, and Python SDKs will continue to be supported, however, the Java SDK is being retired with final long-term support ending in November 2023.

Existing bots built with the Java SDK will continue to function.

For new bot building, consider using Power Virtual Agents and read about choosing the right chatbot solution.

For more information, see The future of bot building.

To use a trace activity

In order to see a trace activity in the Emulator, you need a scenario in which your bot will send a trace activity, such as throwing an exception and sending a trace activity from the adapter's on turn error handler.

To send a trace activity from your bot:

1. Create a new activity.
   • Set its required type property to "trace".
   • Optionally, set its name, label, value, and value type properties, as appropriate for the trace.
2. Use the turn context object's send activity method to send the trace activity.
   • This method adds values for the remaining required properties of the activity, based on the incoming activity. These properties include the channel ID, service URL, from, and recipient properties.

To view a trace activity in the Emulator:

1. Run the bot locally on your machine.
2. Test it using the Emulator.
   • Interact with the bot and use the steps in your scenario to generate the trace activity.
   • When your bot emits the trace activity, the trace activity is displayed in the Emulator log.

Here's a trace activity you might see if you ran the Core bot without first setting up the QnAMaker knowledge base that the bot relies upon.

Add a trace activity to the adapter's on-error handler

The adapter's on turn error handler catches any otherwise uncaught exception thrown from the bot during a turn. The error handler is a good place for a trace activity, as you can send a user-friendly message to the user and send debugging information about the exception to the Emulator.

This example code is from the Core Bot sample. See the complete sample in C#, JavaScript, Python, or Java.

C#

The adapter's OnTurnError handler creates the trace activity to include the exception information and sends it to the Emulator.

AdapterWithErrorHandler.cs

    {
        // Log any leaked exception from the application.
        // NOTE: In production environment, you should consider logging this to
        // Azure Application Insights. Visit https://aka.ms/bottelemetry to see how
        // to add telemetry capture to your bot.
        logger.LogError(exception, $"[OnTurnError] unhandled error : {exception.Message}");

        // Send a message to the user
        var errorMessageText = "The bot encountered an error or bug.";
        var errorMessage = MessageFactory.Text(errorMessageText, errorMessageText, InputHints.IgnoringInput);
        await turnContext.SendActivityAsync(errorMessage);

        errorMessageText = "To continue to run this bot, please fix the bot source code.";
        errorMessage = MessageFactory.Text(errorMessageText, errorMessageText, InputHints.ExpectingInput);
        await turnContext.SendActivityAsync(errorMessage);

        if (conversationState != null)
        {
            try
            {
                // Delete the conversationState for the current conversation to prevent the
                // bot from getting stuck in a error-loop caused by being in a bad state.
                // ConversationState should be thought of as similar to "cookie-state" in a Web pages.
                await conversationState.DeleteAsync(turnContext);
            }
            catch (Exception e)
            {
                logger.LogError(e, $"Exception caught on attempting to Delete ConversationState : {e.Message}");
            }
        }

        // Send a trace activity, which will be displayed in the Bot Framework Emulator
        await turnContext.TraceActivityAsync("OnTurnError Trace", exception.Message, "https://www.botframework.com/schemas/error", "TurnError");
    };
}

JavaScript

The adapter's onTurnError handler creates the trace activity to include the exception information and sends it to the Emulator.

index.js

    // Send a trace activity, which will be displayed in Bot Framework Emulator
    await context.sendTraceActivity(
        'OnTurnError Trace',
        `${ error }`,
        'https://www.botframework.com/schemas/error',
        'TurnError'
    );

    // Send a message to the user
    let onTurnErrorMessage = 'The bot encountered an error or bug.';
    await context.sendActivity(onTurnErrorMessage, onTurnErrorMessage, InputHints.ExpectingInput);
    onTurnErrorMessage = 'To continue to run this bot, please fix the bot source code.';
    await context.sendActivity(onTurnErrorMessage, onTurnErrorMessage, InputHints.ExpectingInput);
    // Clear out state
    await conversationState.delete(context);
};

// Set the onTurnError for the singleton CloudAdapter.
adapter.onTurnError = onTurnErrorHandler;

// Define a state store for your bot. See https://aka.ms/about-bot-state to learn more about using MemoryStorage.
// A bot requires a state store to persist the dialog and user state between messages.

// For local development, in-memory storage is used.

Java

In the Java SDK, an AdapterWithErrorHandler class is included as part of the SDK in the com.microsoft.bot.integration package. The adapter's onTurnError handler creates the trace activity to include the exception information and sends it to the Emulator. The source code for the default adapter is shown below.

AdapterWithErrorHandler.java

setOnTurnError((turnContext, exception) -> {
    LoggerFactory.getLogger(AdapterWithErrorHandler.class).error("onTurnError", exception);


    return turnContext.sendActivities(
        MessageFactory.text(ERROR_MSG_ONE), MessageFactory.text(ERROR_MSG_TWO)
    ).thenCompose(resourceResponse -> sendTraceActivity(turnContext, exception))
        .thenCompose(stageResult -> {
            if (withConversationState != null) {
                // Delete the conversationState for the current conversation to prevent the
                // bot from getting stuck in a error-loop caused by being in a bad state.
                // ConversationState should be thought of as similar to "cookie-state" in a
                // Web pages.
                return withConversationState.delete(turnContext)
                    .exceptionally(deleteException -> {
                        LoggerFactory.getLogger(AdapterWithErrorHandler.class)
                            .error("ConversationState.delete", deleteException);
                        return null;
                    });
            }
            return CompletableFuture.completedFuture(null);
        });
});

Python

The adapter's on_error handler creates the trace activity to include the exception information and sends it to the Emulator.

adapter_with_error_handler.py

# This check writes out errors to console log
# NOTE: In production environment, you should consider logging this to Azure
#       application insights.
print(f"\n [on_turn_error] unhandled error: {error}", file=sys.stderr)
traceback.print_exc()

# Send a message to the user
await context.send_activity("The bot encountered an error or bug.")
await context.send_activity(
    "To continue to run this bot, please fix the bot source code."
)
# Send a trace activity if we're talking to the Bot Framework Emulator
if context.activity.channel_id == "emulator":
    # Create a trace activity that contains the error object
    trace_activity = Activity(
        label="TurnError",
        name="on_turn_error Trace",
        timestamp=datetime.utcnow(),
        type=ActivityTypes.trace,
        value=f"{error}",
        value_type="https://www.botframework.com/schemas/error",
    )
    # Send a trace activity, which will be displayed in Bot Framework Emulator
    await context.send_activity(trace_activity)

Next steps

• How to Debug a bot with inspection middleware describes how to add middleware that emits trace activities.
• For debugging a deployed bot, you can use Application Insights. For more information, see Add telemetry to your bot.
• For detailed information about each activity type, see the Bot Framework Activity schema.