Sending Universal Action Adaptive Card to Outlook via Bot Framework v4

Question

Hi,
I want to send a v1.4 adaptive card to both Teams and Outlook. I have it working in Teams, but cant work out how I can also have the card delivered to Outlook. I've scoured the web looking for an example, but cant seem to find one. Could anyone provide me with a pointer in the right direction on how to send an adaptive card to outlook via a bot please?

thanks

Answer 1

Hello,

Is this document you are looking for? https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/platform/task-modules-and-cards/cards/universal-actions-for-adaptive-cards/overview?tabs=mobile#universal-actions

Before the Universal Actions for Adaptive Cards, different hosts provided different action models as follows:
Teams or bots used Action.Submit, an approach which defers the actual communication model to the underlying channel.
Outlook used Action.Http to communicate with the backend service explicitly specified in the Adaptive Card payload.

More information please refer to the document.

Regards,
Yutong

Answer 2

Hi Yutong - thanks for the quick reply. This is exactly what I need to achieve, but I'm struggling to find out how to send the card as part of an email. How do I send the adaptive card to Outlook? I can achieve this by building an Email message object and sending via Graph, but when I open the email a warning label is shown - "The action could not be completed".

Looking at the HTTP traffic, i receive an HTTP500 with the following message:
{"innerErrorCode":"Unknown","innerErrorMessage":"Object reference not set to an instance of an object.","authenticationUrl":null,"displayMessage":"The action could not be completed."}

thanks
James

Answer 3

Hi Chetan
My understanding is that the universal model means that Action.Execute can be used in both Teams and Outlook - this is to unify the action mechanism so the same card payload can be used in both Teams and Outlook channels.

{
"type": "AdaptiveCard",
"version": "1.4",
"originator": "",
"$schema": "http://adaptivecards.io/schemas/adaptive-card.json",
"refresh": {
"action": {
"type": "Action.Execute",
"title": "Refresh",
"verb": "refreshCard",
"id": "refreshCard"
},
"userIds": "${userIds}"
},
"actions": [
{
"type": "Action.Execute",
"title": "Approve",
"verb": "approveClicked"
}
],
"body": [
{
"type": "TextBlock",
"wrap": true,
"weight": "Bolder",
"text": "Approval request view"
},
{
"type": "TextBlock",
"wrap": true,
"text": "Please approve this asset"
}
]
}

Answer 4

Hi - from what I've read, the new Execute method should work in Outlook and Teams. This is a recent update to unify the action model between the two channels.

Answer 5

Hi @Evan Abramson - afraid not.

I'm still working on it. I was doing the same as you sending it via graph insuring the originator ID was passed as part of the payload. For the time being I've had to implement v1.0 with a separate backend that can process the POST. I found this blog post by Vardhaman: https://www.vrdmn.com/2021/07/working-with-adaptive-card-universal.html
where he mentions that he is going to write a blog post on how to do this.

If I make any progress, I'll update this thread. If you get there before me, I'd appreciate any pointers in the right direction.

thanks
James