nodejs

page_type	description	products	languages	extensions	urlFragment
sample	This Microsoft Teams sample app illustrates how to create conversational tabs, enabling users to engage in discussions about sub-entities within the app.	office-teams office office-365	nodejs	contentType createdDate samples 06-10-2021 01:48:56	officedev-microsoft-teams-samples-tab-conversations-nodejs

Conversational Tabs

Explore this Microsoft Teams sample app that demonstrates how to build conversational tabs, allowing users to have meaningful discussions about specific sub-entities within the tab. With comprehensive setup guidelines, including requirements for Node.js and Azure registration, this app provides a seamless experience for developers looking to enhance user interaction and collaboration in their Teams applications. Create conversational tabs

Included Features

• Conversational Tabs

Interaction with app

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).

Conversational Tabs: Manifest

Prerequisites

1. Office 365 tenant. You can get a free tenant for development use by signing up for the Office 365 Developer Program.

2. To test locally, NodeJS must be installed on your development machine (version 10.14 or higher).

   # determine node version
   node --version

3. dev tunnel or ngrok or equivalent tunneling solution If you are using Ngrok to test locally, you'll need Ngrok installed on your development machine. Make sure you've downloaded and installed Ngrok on your local machine. ngrok will tunnel requests from the Internet to your local computer and terminate the SSL connection from Teams.

NOTE: The free ngrok plan will generate a new URL every time you run it, which requires you to update your Azure AD registration, the Teams app manifest, and the project configuration. A paid account with a permanent ngrok URL is recommended.

4. Teams Toolkit for VS Code or TeamsFx CLI

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

1. Register a new application in the Microsoft Entra ID – App Registrations portal.

NOTE: When you create app registration, you will create an App ID and App password - make sure you keep these for later.

2. 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

3. Setup for code

• Clone the repository

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

• In a console, navigate to samples/tab-conversations/nodejs

  cd samples/tab-conversations/nodejs

• Open a terminal and navigate to project root directory

  npm run server

  This command is equivalent to: npm install > npm start

4. Setup Manifest for Teams

• 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 app registration earlier) everywhere you see the place holder string {{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 and replace {{domain-name}} with base Url of your 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 the Apps view click "Upload a custom app")

  • Go to Microsoft Teams. From the lower left corner, select Apps
  • From the lower left corner, choose Upload a custom App
  • Go to your project directory, the ./appManifest folder, select the zip folder, and choose Open.
  • Select Add in the pop-up dialog box. Your app is uploaded to Teams.

Running sample

• Tab showing actions that can be performed

• Open Conversation - opens a new conversation

• Close Conversation - closes the conversation view

• Continue Conversation - continues old conversation based on conversation id

NOTE: We should save the subEntityId and conversationId to continue an existing conversartion.

• Deeplink to Conversation - opens the conversation in channel

Interacting with the tab in Teams

You can use this tab by following the below steps:

• In the navigation bar located at the far left in Teams, select the ellipses ●●● and choose your app from the list.

Further reading

-Create conversational tabs