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Microsoft Teams Bot

The Microsoft Teams Bot integration lets users hold a bidirectional conversation with OctoMesh directly from a Microsoft Teams chat: they can send messages (questions) and upload files (for example invoices), and receive answers back in the same conversation.

It is built on the Azure Bot Service and two mesh-adapter pipeline nodes:

NodeKindPurpose
FromTeamsBot@1TriggerHosts the Bot Framework messaging endpoint (POST /{tenant}/teamsBot), authenticates the request, downloads any file attachments and starts the pipeline for the incoming message.
TeamsBotReply@1LoadSends a reply back into the originating conversation through the Bot Framework REST API.

Unlike the polling-based FromMicrosoftGraph@1 trigger (which only reads a Teams channel), the bot is real-time and two-way: it supports 1:1 chats, file uploads and threaded replies.

Architecture​

  1. The user writes to the bot in Teams.
  2. Azure Bot Service relays the activity to the mesh adapter's messaging endpoint. For local development the endpoint is exposed through a dev tunnel (see Setup); in production it is a public HTTPS URL of the adapter.
  3. FromTeamsBot@1 normalises the activity — including downloaded file attachments — into the same $.Emails[] / AttachmentData shape produced by the e-mail and Graph triggers, so the downstream pipeline is channel-agnostic. Conversation routing metadata (serviceUrl, conversationId, sender) is placed at $.Conversation.
  4. Your pipeline does whatever it needs (query data, run an AI prompt, store an uploaded file …).
  5. TeamsBotReply@1 posts the answer back into the conversation.

Unified message shape​

FromTeamsBot@1 emits the same structure as FromEmail@1 / FromMicrosoftGraph@1:

$.Emails[0].Body                     — the message text
$.Emails[0].From                     — sender display name
$.Emails[0].Attachments[0].Data      — base64 file content (PDF, image, …)
$.Emails[0].Attachments[0].ContentType
$.Conversation.ServiceUrl            — where TeamsBotReply@1 sends the answer
$.Conversation.ConversationId
$.Conversation.ActivityId            — for threaded replies

This means a single pipeline can serve e-mail and Teams with only the trigger and the reply node differing per channel.

Credentials​

Both nodes read their credentials from a MicrosoftGraphConfiguration entity resolved by name through a Uses association on the pipeline. The Azure AD App Registration's ClientId / ClientSecret double as the bot's App ID / secret, and AzureTenantId selects the token authority (required for a single-tenant bot — see below) and is also used to download channel (SharePoint) file attachments via Microsoft Graph.

Single-tenant vs. multi-tenant bot​

Many Azure AD tenants now block the creation of multi-tenant app registrations, so the Azure Bot resource only offers Single Tenant (or Managed Identity, which has no client secret and cannot be used here). A single-tenant bot is fully supported:

  • TeamsBotReply@1 requests its Bot Framework token from the tenant authority https://login.microsoftonline.com/{AzureTenantId}/oauth2/v2.0/token when AzureTenantId is set, and from the botframework.com authority (multi-tenant) when it is blank.
  • Therefore AzureTenantId is mandatory for a single-tenant bot.

Continue with the step-by-step Setup.