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altjx's avatar
altjx
Copper Contributor
Aug 09, 2023

How to actually publish a teams bot

I'm currently in the process of migrating from Slack to Microsoft Teams, and I'm encountering some confusion and challenges when trying to publish a bot using the Bot Framework. Our IT team has given me the green light to create a bot, which is essentially a chat gateway between Teams and our SaaS app. Our Slack bot, for example, would allow the user to interact with it and have certain tasks performed within our SaaS app because all the messages and mentions would be directed to an API endpoint.

 

While I've made progress, the process has been a bit of a nightmare due to the confusions and massive amounts of overwhelming documentation between BotFramework, Azure Bot Service, and the overall integration with Microsoft Teams.

 

Here are my main questions:

  1. Publishing Bot to Teams: I've developed a bot on dev.botframework.com, thoroughly tested it, and it's ready for prime time. But now I'm stuck on the actual publishing process. How can I deploy this bot into Microsoft Teams so that other users can interact with it, and it can be added to channels seamlessly? I'm uncertain about the steps involved and the specific platform I need to use for this.

  2. IT Involvement: Our IT team has created a client secret (app password) as a part of their involvement. However, I'm unclear about whether they need to do anything else beyond this point to make the bot actually work. Will they need to "approve" the bot submission, and if so, how can this be done through the bot framework website?

I've managed to code the bot, but now I'm at a crossroads about what to do next. I believe the next step is to publish it, but I'm unsure about where and how to proceed. While Teams does offer custom app uploads, I'm only left with my bot created on dev.botframework.com and registered in the Azure portal, with no clear instructions on what's needed for the upload.

 

If any of you have pointers, tips, or personal experiences to share, I would greatly appreciate your insights. I'm eager to make this bot transition successful, but the intricacies of this process have me scratching my head.

 

Thank you in advance for any help you can provide!

  • For anyone else who spends days trying to figure this out, you can go to https://dev.teams.microsoft.com/apps.

    This lets you create the app, test the app, AND publish the app. I have no idea why dev.botframework.com exists. At all.
  • altjx's avatar
    altjx
    Copper Contributor
    For anyone else who spends days trying to figure this out, you can go to https://dev.teams.microsoft.com/apps.

    This lets you create the app, test the app, AND publish the app. I have no idea why dev.botframework.com exists. At all.

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