Explore tools for developing bots for Microsoft Teams
Teams Toolkit
Teams Toolkit handles the complexity of creating and configuring the resources needed to develop a bot. For example, when you run the bot for the first time, Teams Toolkit for Visual Studio Code performs the following steps for you:
- Verifies and installs prerequisites.
- Starts an HTTP tunnel using VisualStudio Dev Tunnels service.
- Creates a Microsoft Entra app registration.
- Creates an Azure Bot Service registration.
- Compiles the bot code and starts a local web server.
- Generates a Teams app package.
- Deploys the app package to Teams.
- Starts a debugging session.
- Opens a browser window, opens a Teams web client, and displays an app installation dialog.
Bot Framework SDK
The Microsoft Bot Framework SDK is a rich SDK for building bots using C# or JavaScript. It provides a set of libraries and services that allow you to build, test, and deploy bots that can interact with users across multiple channels, including Microsoft Teams. Bots created using the Microsoft Bot Framework are diverse and can be used in multiple platforms.
Teams AI Library
Teams AI Library simplifies the process of writing and maintaining conversational bot logic to integrate with large language models (LLMs). The library provides a simple capabilities-driven approach and helps you create intelligent apps quickly and easily with prebuilt, reusable code snippets.
Teams AI library supports the following capabilities:
Send or receive messages
Message extension (ME) capabilities
Adaptive Card capabilities
Note
Note that the Teams AI library is a new, recommended approach to building bots for Microsoft Teams. It is designed to facilitate the construction of bots that can interact with Microsoft Teams, whether you use AI or not. While one of the key features of Teams AI library is the AI support that customers can utilize, the initial objective might be to upgrade your current bot without AI. After you upgrade, the bot can connect to AI or large language model (LLM) available in the AI library. The library supports the migration of messaging capabilities, message extension (ME) capabilities, and Adaptive Card capabilities to the new format. It's also possible to upgrade existing Teams apps with these features. This training module currently describes how to build bots using the Bot Framework SDK.
When you're ready to migrate from the Bot Framework SDK to Teams Toolkit review the migration guides linked in the Teams AI Library Getting Started guide.