Bot Framework v4 - Bot Initiate Conversation

Question

I am developing a bot for Microsoft Teams using the Bot Framework SDK v4 for NodeJS. Is there a way that the bot can automatically initiate a conversation in a channel, rath

Answer 1

MS Teams calls that a "Proactive Message" (note: Bot Framework generally defines a "proactive message" as sending a user a message not related to current conversation, that you have a reference for. Teams lumps a few things into this category). You can read more about how to use proactive messaging from the official Teams docs. Or, more specifically, creating a channel conversation.

The gist of it is that you need to capture a conversationUpdate and check for a new member added to the conversation or fetch the team roster, then you send the proactive message.

Note: For MS Teams, the user or team will have to add the bot first:

Bots can create new conversations with an individual Microsoft Teams user as long as your bot has user information obtained through previous addition in a personal or team scope. This information enables your bot to proactively notify them. For instance, if your bot was added to a team, it could query the team roster and send users individual messages in personal chats, or a user could @mention another user to trigger the bot to send that user a direct message.

Some developers come across 401: Unauthorized errors when using proactive messaging, especially if the bot was restarted for some reason and the bot is attempting to re-initiate a proactive message. You can read more about preventing that by using trustServiceUrl from this Sample (this is my branch, which is being used to submit a Pull Request to update the Proactive Sample with trustServiceUrl info).