Teams Messaging Extensions Search

Code Sample
12/19/2023

Messaging Extensions are a special kind of Microsoft Teams application that is support by the Bot Framework v4.

There are two basic types of Messaging Extension in Teams: Search-based and Action-based. This sample illustrates how to build a Search-based Messaging Extension.

Included Features

Bots
Message Extensions
Search Commands

Interaction with Messaging Extension

Try it yourself - experience the App in your Microsoft Teams client

Please find below demo manifest which is deployed on Microsoft Azure and you can try it yourself by uploading the app manifest (.zip file link below) to your teams and/or as a personal app. (Sideloading must be enabled for your tenant, see steps here).

Teams Messaging Extensions Search: Manifest

Prerequisites

Microsoft Teams is installed and you have an account
.NET SDK version 6.0
dev tunnel or ngrok latest version or equivalent tunnelling solution

Setup

Note these instructions are for running the sample on your local machine, the tunnelling solution is required because the Teams service needs to call into the bot.

Run ngrok - point to port 3978
```
ngrok http 3978 --host-header="localhost:3978"
```
Alternatively, you can also use the dev tunnels. Please follow Create and host a dev tunnel and host the tunnel with anonymous user access command as shown below:
```
devtunnel host -p 3978 --allow-anonymous
```
Setup for Bot

In Azure portal, create a Azure Bot resource.
- For bot handle, make up a name.
- Select "Use existing app registration" (Create the app registration in Microsoft Entra ID beforehand.)
- If you don't have an Azure account create an Azure free account here
In the new Azure Bot resource in the Portal,
- Ensure that you've enabled the Teams Channel
- In Settings/Configuration/Messaging endpoint, enter the current https URL you were given by running the tunnelling application. Append with the path /api/messages

Clone the repository

git clone https://github.com/OfficeDev/Microsoft-Teams-Samples.git

If you are using Visual Studio
- Launch Visual Studio
- File -> Open -> Project/Solution
- Navigate to samples/msgext-search/csharp folder
- Select TeamsMessagingExtensionsSearch.csproj or TeamsMessagingExtensionsSearch.slnfile
Update the appsettings.json configuration for the bot to use the MicrosoftAppId, MicrosoftAppTenantId and MicrosoftAppPassword from the Bot Framework registration. (Note the App Password is referred to as the "client secret" in the azure portal and you can always create a new client secret anytime.)
- Also, set MicrosoftAppType in the appsettings.json. (Allowed values are: MultiTenant(default), SingleTenant, UserAssignedMSI)
- Set "BaseUrl" in the appsettings.json as per your application like the ngrok forwarding url (ie https://xxxx.ngrok-free.app) after starting ngrok and if you are using dev tunnels, your URL will be like: https://12345.devtunnels.ms.
Run your bot, either from Visual Studio with F5 or using dotnet run in the appropriate folder.
This step is specific to Teams.
- Edit the manifest.json contained in the AppManifest folder to replace your Microsoft App Id (that was created when you registered your bot earlier) everywhere you see the place holder string <<YOUR-MICROSOFT-APP-ID>> (depending on the scenario the Microsoft App Id may occur multiple times in the manifest.json)
- Edit the manifest.json for validDomains with base Url domain. E.g. if you are using ngrok it would be https://1234.ngrok-free.app then your domain-name will be 1234.ngrok-free.app and if you are using dev tunnels then your domain will be like: 12345.devtunnels.ms.
- Zip up the contents of the AppManifest folder to create a manifest.zip
- Upload the manifest.zip to Teams (In Teams Apps/Manage your apps click "Upload an app". Browse to and Open the .zip file. At the next dialog, click the Add button.)

Note: If you are facing any issue in your app, please uncomment this line and put your debugger for local debug.

Running the sample

Note this manifest.json specified that the feature will be available from both the compose and commandBox areas of Teams. Please refer to Teams documentation for more details.

In Teams, the command bar is located at the top of the window. When you at mention the bot what you type is forwarded (as you type) to the bot for processing. By way of illustration, this sample uses the text it receives to query the NuGet package store.

Mention In Search CommandBar:

Search Result:

Selected Item:

There is a secondary, drill down, event illustrated in this sample: clicking on the results from the initial query will result in the bot receiving another event.

6-selected-Item-ME

Deploy the bot to Azure

To learn more about deploying a bot to Azure, see Deploy your bot to Azure for a complete list of deployment instructions.