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This sample demonstrates how to create a Node.js Messaging Extension in Microsoft Teams that enables users to perform searches and retrieve results seamlessly.
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office
office-365
nodejs
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10-10-2022 10:00:25
officedev-microsoft-teams-samples-msgext-search-nodejs

Teams Messaging Extensions Search

This comprehensive Node.js sample provides a detailed guide on building a search-based Messaging Extensions for Microsoft Teams, empowering users to conduct searches and retrieve results efficiently. By leveraging the Bot Framework, this extension enhances user interaction within Teams, demonstrating features such as search commands, message handling, and result display.

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

msgext-search

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 package (.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

Run the app (Using Teams Toolkit for Visual Studio Code)

The simplest way to run this sample in Teams is to use Teams Toolkit for Visual Studio Code.

  1. Ensure you have downloaded and installed Visual Studio Code
  2. Install the Teams Toolkit extension
  3. Select File > Open Folder in VS Code and choose this samples directory from the repo
  4. Using the extension, sign in with your Microsoft 365 account where you have permissions to upload custom apps
  5. Select Debug > Start Debugging or F5 to run the app in a Teams web client.
  6. In the browser that launches, select the Add button to install the app to Teams.

If you do not have permission to upload custom apps (sideloading), Teams Toolkit will recommend creating and using a Microsoft 365 Developer Program account - a free program to get your own dev environment sandbox that includes Teams.

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.

  1. 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

Setup for code

  1. Clone the repository

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

  2. In a terminal, navigate to samples/msgext-search/nodejs

  3. Install modules

    npm install

  4. Update the .env configuration for the bot to use the Microsoft App Id and App Password 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.) MicrosoftAppTenantId will be the id for the tenant where application is registered.

    • Set "MicrosoftAppType" in the env. (Allowed values are: MultiTenant(default), SingleTenant, UserAssignedMSI)

    • Set "BaseUrl" in the env 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.

  5. Run your bot at the command line:

    npm start

  6. 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 (Make sure that zip file does not contains any subfolder otherwise you will get error while uploading your .zip package)
    • 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.)
    • Add the bot to personal/team/groupChat scope (Supported scopes)

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: 8-mention-Search-CommandBar

Search Result: 9-mention-Search-Result

Selected Item: 10-mention-Search-SelectedItem

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. 5-search-Result-ME

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.

Further reading