Conversational Bot - Microsoft Teams App

Generate a Microsoft Teams application.

TODO: Add your documentation here

Getting started with Microsoft Teams Apps development

Head on over to Microsoft Teams official documentation to learn how to build Microsoft Teams Tabs or the Microsoft Teams Yeoman generator Wiki for details on how this solution is set up.

Project setup

All required source code are located in the ./src folder - split into two parts

app for the application
manifest for the Microsoft Teams app manifest

For further details se the Yo Teams wiki for the project structure

Building the app

The application is built using the build Gulp task.

npm i -g gulp gulp-cli
gulp build

Building the manifest

To create the Microsoft Teams Apps manifest, run the manifest Gulp task. This will generate and validate the package and finally create the package (a zip file) in the package folder. The manifest will be validated against the schema and dynamically populated with values from the .env file.

gulp manifest

Configuration

Configuration is stored in the .env file.

Debug and test locally

To debug and test the solution locally you use the serve Gulp task. This will first build the app and then start a local web server on port 3007, where you can test your Tabs, Bots or other extensions. Also this command will rebuild the App if you change any file in the /src directory.

gulp serve

To debug the code you can append the argument debug to the serve command as follows. This allows you to step through your code using your preferred code editor.

gulp serve --debug

To step through code in Visual Studio Code you need to add the following snippet in the ./.vscode/launch.json file. Once done, you can easily attach to the node process after running the gulp server --debug command.

{
    "type": "node",
    "request": "attach",
    "name": "Attach",
    "port": 5858,
    "sourceMaps": true,
    "outFiles": [
        "${workspaceRoot}/dist/**/*.js"
    ],
    "remoteRoot": "${workspaceRoot}/src/"
},

Using ngrok for local development and hosting

In order to make development locally a great experience it is recommended to use ngrok, which allows you to publish the localhost on a public DNS, so that you can consume the bot and the other resources in Microsoft Teams.

To use ngrok, it is recommended to use the gulp ngrok-serve command, which will read your ngrok settings from the .env file and automatically create a correct manifest file and finally start a local development server using the ngrok settings.

Additional build options

You can use the following flags for the serve, ngrok-serve and build commands:

--no-linting - skips the linting of Typescript during build to improve build times
--debug - builds in debug mode

Deploying to Azure using Git

If you want to deploy to Azure using Git follow these steps.

This will automatically deploy your files to Azure, download the npm pacakges, build the solution and start the web server using Express.

Log into the Azure Portal
Create a new Resource Group or use an existing one
Create a new Web App with Windows App Service Plan and give it the name of your tab, the same you used when asked for URL in the Yeoman generator. In your case https://conversationalbot.azurewebsites.net.
Add the following keys in the Configuration -> Application Settings; Name = WEBSITE_NODE_DEFAULT_VERSION, Value = 8.10.0 and Name = SCM_COMMAND_IDLE_TIMEOUT, Value = 1800. Click Save.
Go to Deployment Center
Choose Local Git as source and App Service build service as the Build Provider
Click on Deployment Credentials and store the App Credentials securely
In your tab folder initialize a Git repository using git init
Build the solution using gulp build to make sure you don't have any errors
Commit all your files using git add -A && git commit -m "Initial commit"
Run the following command to set up the remote repository: git remote add azure https://<username>@conversationalbot.scm.azurewebsites.net:443/conversationalbot.git. You need to replace with the username of the App Credentials you retrieved in Deployment Credentials. You can also copy the URL from Options in the Azure Web App.
To push your code use to Azure use the following command: git push azure master, you will be asked for your credentials the first time, insert the Password for the App Credential. Note that you should update the Azure Web Site application setting before pushing the code as the settings are needed when building the application.
Wait until the deployment is completed and navigate to https://conversationalbot.azurewebsites.net/privacy.html to test that the web application is running
Done
Repeat step 11 for every commit you do and want to deploy

NOTE: The .env file is excluded from source control and will not be pushed to the web site so you need to ensure that all the settings present in the .env file are added as application settings to your Azure Web site (except the PORT variable which is used for local debugging).

Logging

To enable logging for the solution you need to add msteams to the DEBUG environment variable. See the debug package for more information. By default this setting is turned on in the .env file.

Example for Windows command line:

SET DEBUG=msteams

If you are using Microsoft Azure to host your Microsoft Teams app, then you can add DEBUG as an Application Setting with the value of msteams.

moseskt/learn-msteams-bots