ZZZ ‐ [Archived] ‐ Build a Basic AI Chatbot in Teams

Important

Content in this document has been moved to Teams platform documentation. Please do not refer to or update this document.

Teams AI Library is a SDK that specifically designed to assist you in creating bots capable of interacting with Teams and Microsoft 365 applications. It is constructed using the Bot Framework SDK as its foundation, simplifying the process of developing bots that interact with Teams' artificial intelligence capabilities.

Microsoft Teams Toolkit is an extension in Visual Studio Code that enables you to get started with building a basic AI chatbot in Temas with ready-to-use application templates written in JavaScript, TypeScript and Python and task automations.

In this tutorial, you will learn:

Get started with Teams Toolkit and Teams AI Library:

• How to create a new Basic AI Chatbot
• How to understand the Basic AI Chatbot project
• How Teams AI Chatbot works

Customize the app template:

• How to customize the prompts
• How to customize the user inputs
• How to customize conversation history
• How to customize model type
• How to customize completion type
• How to customize the model parameters
• How to handle messages with image

---

Create a new Basic AI Chatbot project

In Visual Studio Code

1. From Teams Toolkit side bar click Create a New App or select Teams: Create a New App from the command palette.

2. Select Custom Copilot.

3. Select Basic AI Chatbot.

4. Select a Programming Language

5. Select a service to access LLMs

6. Based on your service selection, you can optionally enter the credentials to access OpenAI or Azure OpenAI. Hit enter to skip.

7. Select a folder where to create you project. The default one is ${HOME}/TeamsApps/.

8. Enter an application name and then press enter.

Important

Make sure you have entered the credentials to access Azure OpenAI or OpenAI service. If you have skipped entering those in the project creation dialog, follow the README file in the project to specify them.

After you successfully created the project, you can quickly start local debugging via F5 in Visual Studio Code. Select Debug in Test Tool (Preview) debug option to test the application in Teams App Test Tool. Now you can start chatting with your AI-powered bot

back to top

Understand the Basic AI Chatbot project

Teams Toolkit generates a standard project that has built-in features to demonstarte how a basic AI chatbot works as well as some configuration files that helps automate the development experience.

Folder	Contents
.vscode	VSCode files for debugging
appPackage	Templates for the Teams application manifest
env	Environment files
infra	Templates for provisioning Azure resources
src	The source code for the application

The following files can be customized and demonstrate an example implementation to get you started.

For Javascript language:

File	Contents
src/index.js	Sets up the bot app server.
src/adapter.js	Sets up the bot adapter.
src/config.js	Defines the environment variables.
src/prompts/chat/skprompt.txt	Defines the prompt.
src/prompts/chat/config.json	Configures the prompt.
src/app/app.js	Handles business logics for the Basic AI Chatbot.

For Python language:

File	Contents
src/api.py	Hosts an aiohttp api server for the app.
src/bot.py	Handles business logics for the Basic AI Chatbot.
src/config.py	Defines the environment variables.
src/app.py	Main module of the bot.
src/prompts/chat/skprompt.txt	Defines the prompt.
src/prompts/chat/config.json	Configures the prompt.

The following are Teams Toolkit specific project files. You can visit a complete guide on Github to understand how Teams Toolkit works.

File	Contents
teamsapp.yml	This is the main Teams Toolkit project file. The project file defines two primary things: Properties and configuration Stage definitions.
teamsapp.local.yml	This overrides teamsapp.yml with actions that enable local execution and debugging.
teamsapp.testtool.yml	This overrides teamsapp.yml with actions that enable local execution and debugging in Teams App Test Tool.

back to top

How Teams AI Chatbot works

Teams-AI library provides a typical flow to build an intelligent chatbot with AI capabilities.

Tip

Click here to learn more about Turn Context and Turn States.

Turn Context and Turn State

At the beginning to handle any incoming requests to your bot, Teams AI library prepares TurnContext and TurnState objects. Those are the key objects going through the entire messaging process flow.

• TurnContext: The turn context object provides information about the activity such as the sender and receiver, the channel, and other data needed to process the activity.
• TurnState: The turn state object stores cookie-like data for the current turn. Just like the turn context, it is carried through the entire application logic, including the activity handlers and the AI System.

Authentication

If user authentication is configured, Teams AI attempts to sign the user in. If the user is already signed in, the SDK retrieves the access token and continues. Otherwise, the SDK starts the sign in flow and ends the current turn.

BeforeTurn Handler

Before the activity handler or AI system is executed, Teams AI library executes a beforeTurn handler. This allows you to do something before the turn is run. If it returns false, the SDK saves turn state to storage and ends the turn.

Important

On each turn, Teams AI library sequentially goes through all registered handlers to see if the incoming activity matches the selector. Thus, only the first matched handler will be executed.

Activity Handlers

After that, Teams AI library executes a set of registered activity handlers. This enables developers to handle several types of activities. The activity handler system is the primary way to implement bot or message extension application logic. It is a set of methods and configurations that allows you to register callbacks (known as route handlers), which will trigger based on the incoming activity. These can be in the form of a message, message reaction, or virtually any interaction within the Teams app.

The Teams AI library provides a set of handler registration APIs, e.g., app.message(text, handler) to handle specific text message input. Below is a sequential diagram shows how a bot handles the incoming activity on each turn:

Aother typical usage of message handler is to decorate the messages sent by your bot using rich UI elements such as Adaptive Cards, you can design and iterate over your cards with Microsoft Adaptive Card Previewer.

Tip

Check Teams AI Library concept documentations here to learn more about other important concepts for the AI System such as Action Planner, Prompt Management and Retrieval Augmented Generations (RAG).

The AI System

The AI system in Teams AI library is responsible for moderating input and output, generating plans, and executing them. It can be used free standing or routed to by the Application object. Those are the most important concepts you need to know:

• Prompt Manager: Prompts play a crucial role in communicating and directing the behavior of Large Language Models (LLMs) AI.
• Planner: The planner receives the user's ask and returns a plan on how to accomplish the request. The user's ask is in the form of a prompt or prompt template. It does this by using AI to mix and match atomic functions (called actions) registered to the AI system so that it can recombine them into a series of steps that complete a goal.
• Actions: An action is an atomic function that is registered to the AI System. It is a fundamental building block of a plan.

AfterTurn Handler and Respond to User

After the activity handler or AI system is executed, Teams AI library executes an afterTurn handler. This allows you to do something after the turn. If it returns true, the SDK saves turn state to storage.

After that, Teams AI library saves the state and bot can send the response to user.

back to top

Customize Basic AI Chatbot

You can add customizations on top of this basic application to build more complex scenarios.

Customize prompt

Prompts play a crucial role in communicating and directing the behavior of Large Language Models (LLMs) AI. They serve as inputs or queries that users can provide to elicit specific responses from a model. Here's a prompt that asks the LLM for name suggestions:

Input:

Give me 3 name suggestions for my pet golden retriever.

Response:

Some possible name suggestions for a pet golden retriever are:

- Bailey
- Sunny
- Cooper

Using project generated with Teams Toolkit, you can author the prompts in src/prompts/chat/skprompt.txt file. The prompts written in this file will be inserted into the prompt used to instruct the LLM. Teams AI library defines the following syntax that you can use in the prompt text.

Syntax 1: {{ $[scope].property }}

{{ $[scope].property }} Renders the value of the scoped property that is defined in turn state. Teams AI library defines three scopes: temp, user and conversation. If scope is omitted, the temp scope will be used.

The {{$[scope].property}} is used in the following way:

For Javascript language:

• In src/app/turnState.ts, define your temp state, user state, conversation state and application turn state. Or, if there's no src/app/turnState.ts file in your project, feel free to create turnState.ts file under src/app/.

  import { DefaultConversationState, DefaultTempState, DefaultUserState, TurnState } from "@microsoft/teams-ai";
  
  export interface TempState extends DefaultTempState { ... }
  export interface UserState extends DefaultUserState { ... }
  export interface Task {
      title: string;
      description: string;
  }
  export interface ConversationState extends DefaultConversationState {
      tasks: Record<string, Task>;
  }
  export type ApplicationTurnState = TurnState<ConversationState, UserState, TempState>;

• In src/app/app.ts, use application turn state to initialize application.

  import { ApplicationTurnState } from "./turnState";
  const app = new Application<ApplicationTurnState>(...);

• In src/prompts/chat/skprompt.txt, use the scoped state property such as {{$conversation.tasks}}.

For Python language:

• In src/state.py, define your temp state, user state, conversation state and application turn state. Or, if there's no src/state.py file in your project, feel free to create state.py file under src/.

  from teams.state import TempState, ConversationState, UserState, TurnState
  
  class AppConversationState(ConversationState):
      tasks: Dict[str, Task] # Your data definition here
  
      @classmethod
      async def load(cls, context: TurnContext, storage: Optional[Storage] = None) -> "AppConversationState":
          state = await super().load(context, storage)
          return cls(**state)
  
  class AppTurnState(TurnState[AppConversationState, UserState, TempState]):
      conversation: AppConversationState
  
      @classmethod
      async def load(cls, context: TurnContext, storage: Optional[Storage] = None) -> "AppTurnState":
          return cls(
              conversation=await AppConversationState.load(context, storage),
              user=await UserState.load(context, storage),
              temp=await TempState.load(context, storage),
          )

• In src/bot.py, user application turn state to initialize application.

  from state import AppTurnState
  
  app = Application[AppTurnState](...)

• In src/prompts/chat/skprompt.txt, use the scoped state property such as {{$conversation.tasks}}.

Syntax 2: {{ functionName }}

To call an external function and embed the result in your text, use the {{ functionName }} syntax. For example, if you have a function called getTasks that can return a list of task items, you can embed the results into the prompt:

For Javascript language:

• Register the function into prompt manager in src/app/app.ts:

  prompts.addFunction("getTasks", async (context: TurnContext, memory: Memory, functions: PromptFunctions, tokenizer: Tokenizer, args: string[]) => {
    return ...
  });

• Use the fucntion in src/prompts/chat/skprompt.txt: Your tasks are: {{ getTasks }}.

For Python language:

• Register the function into prompt manager in src/bot.py:

  @prompts.function("getTasks")
  async def get_tasks(
      _context: TurnContext,
      state: MemoryBase,
      _functions: PromptFunctions,
      _tokenizer: Tokenizer,
      _args: List[str],
  ):
      return state.get("conversation.tasks")

• Use the fucntion in src/prompts/chat/skprompt.txt: Your tasks are: {{ getTasks }}.

Syntax 3: {{ functionName arg1 arg2 }}

This syntax enables you to call the specified function with the provided arguments and renders the result. Similar to the usage of calling a function, you can:

1. Register the function into prompt manager:

• For Javascript language, register it in src/app/app.ts.
• For Python language, register it in src/bot.py.

2. Use the function in src/prompts/chat/skprompt.txt such as Your task is: {{ getTasks taskTitle }}.

back to top

Customize user input

Teams AI library allows you to augment the prompt sent to LLM by including the user inputs. When including user inputs, you need to specify it in a prompt configuration file by setting completion.include_input to true in src/prompts/chat/config.json. You can also optionally configure the maximum number of user input tokens in src/prompts/chat/config.json by changing completion.max_input_tokens. This is useful when you want to limit the length of user inputs to avoid token limit exceeded.

Important

Note that the configuration properties in the file may not include all the possible configurations. To learn more about the description of each configuration and all the supported configurations see the PromptTemplatConfig Javascript interface.

back to top

Customize conversation history

The SDK automatically manages the conversation history, and you can customize the following.

Whether to include history. In src/prompts/chat/config.json, configure completion.include_history. If true, the history will be inserted into the prompt to let LLM aware of the conversation context.

Maximum number of history messages. Configure max_history_messages when initializing PromptManager.

For Javascript language:

const prompts = new PromptManager({
  promptsFolder: path.join(__dirname, "../prompts"),
  max_history_messages: 3,
});

For Python language:

prompts = PromptManager(PromptManagerOptions(
    prompts_folder=f"{os.getcwd()}/prompts",
    max_history_messages=3,
))

Maximum number of history tokens. Configure max_conversation_history_tokens when initializing PromptManager.

For Javascript language:

  const prompts = new PromptManager({
    promptsFolder: path.join(__dirname, "../prompts"),
    max_conversation_history_tokens: 1000,
});

For Python language:

prompts = PromptManager(PromptManagerOptions(
    prompts_folder=f"{os.getcwd()}/prompts",
    max_conversation_history_tokens=1000,
))

back to top

Customize model type

You can use a specific model for a prompt. In src/prompts/chat/config.json, configure completion.model. If no model is configured for the prompt, the default model configured in OpenAIModel will be used.

Below lists the models whether the SDK supports.

GPT-3.5

Model	Supported
gpt-3.5-turbo	Supported
gpt-3.5-turbo-16k	Supported
gpt-3.5-turbo-instruct	Not supported from 1.1.0

GPT-4

Model	Supported
gpt-4	Supported
gpt-4-32k	Supported
gpt-4-vision	Supported
gpt-4-turbo	Supported

DALL·E: Not supported currently. Whisper: Not supported currently. TTS: Not supported currently.

You can know more about the models information via OpenAI models and Azure OpenAI models.

back to top

Customize model parameters

In src/prompts/chat/config.json, configure the model parameters under completion:

• max_tokens: The maximum number of tokens to generate.
• temperature: The models temperature as a number between 0 and 2.
• top_p: The models top_p as a number between 0 and 2.
• presence_penalty: The models presence_penalty as a number between 0 and 1.
• frequency_penalty: The models frequency_penalty as a number between 0 and 1.
• stop_sequences: Array of stop sequences that when hit will stop generation.

back to top

Handle messages with image

If you want to handle user messages that includes inline images, for example:

You can:

For Javascript language:

• In src/app/app.ts, initialize TeamsAttachmentDownloader.

  const downloader = new TeamsAttachmentDownloader({
    botAppId: config.botId,
    adapter,
  });

• In src/app/app.ts, use downloader to initialize application.

  const app = new Application({
    ...
    fileDownloaders: [downloader]
  });

• In src/prompts/chat/config.json, set completion.include_images to true. With this, the SDK will insert the images to the prompt sent to LLM.
• In src/prompts/chat/config.json, configure completion.model with your model that can handle messages with image, like gpt-4-vision-preview.
• In src/prompts/chat/skprompt.txt, author your prompt text to handle messages with image.

For Python language:

Currently not supported.

back to top