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Conversation basics

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Important

The code samples in this section are based on version 4.6 and later versions of the Bot Framework SDK. If you are looking for documentation for earlier versions, see the bots - v3 SDK section in the Legacy SDKs folder of the documentation.

A conversation is a series of messages sent between your Microsoft Teams bot and one or more users. The following table provides the three types of conversations, also called scopes in Teams:

Conversation type Description
channel This conversation type is visible to all members of the channel.
personal This conversation type includes conversations between bots and a single user.
groupChat This conversation type includes chat between a bot and two or more users. It also enables your bot in meeting chats.

A bot behaves differently depending on the conversation it's involved in:

  • Bots in channel and group chat conversations require the user to @mention the bot to invoke it in a channel.

  • Bots in a one-to-one conversation don't require an @mention. All messages sent by the user routes to your bot.

Bots can receive all channel and chat messages in a team without being @mentioned using resource-specific consent (RSC) permissions. RSC for all chat messages is only available in public developer preview for Teams. For more information, see receive all conversation messages with RSC.

For the bot to work in a particular conversation or scope, add support to that scope in the app manifest.

Each message in a bot conversation is an Activity object of type messageType: message. When a user sends a message, Teams posts the message to your bot and the bot handles the message. In addition, to define core commands that your bot responds to, you can add a command menu with a dropdown list of commands for your bot. Bots in a group or channel only receive messages when they're mentioned @botname. Teams sends notifications to your bot for conversation events that happen in scopes where your bot is active. You can capture these events in your code and take action on them.

A bot can also send proactive messages to users. A proactive message is any message sent by a bot that isn't in response to a request from a user. You can format your bot messages to include rich cards that include interactive elements, such as buttons, text, images, audio, video, and so on. Bot can dynamically update messages after sending them, instead of having your messages as static snapshots of data. Messages can also be deleted using the Bot Framework's DeleteActivity method.The outgoing request to the bot shows conversation ID and tenant ID in the headers.

The Notification bot is a type of conversation bot, which send notifications as plain text or Adaptive Cards. The notification bot template creates an app that sends a message to Teams with Adaptive Cards triggered by HTTP post request.

The Command bot is a type of conversation bot that can respond to simple commands sent in chats with Adaptive Cards. You can create Command bot templates in Teams to respond to chat commands by displaying UI using an Adaptive Card.

The workflow bot is a type of conversation bot, which interacts with the users in the Adaptive Card. You can customize how the bot sends the Adaptive Card to the users.

Add SSO authentication to your conversation bots

You can add single sign-on authentication to your conversation bot using the following steps:

Next step

Messages in bot conversations

See also