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Work with Universal Actions for Adaptive Cards

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Universal Actions for Adaptive Cards provide a way to implement Adaptive Card based scenarios for both, Teams and Outlook. This document covers the following topics:

Quick start guide to use Universal Actions for Adaptive Cards in Teams

  1. Replace all instances of Action.Submit with Action.Execute to update an existing scenario on Teams.

  2. Add a refresh clause to your Adaptive Card, if you want to use the automatic refresh model or if your scenario requires User Specific Views.

    Note

    Specify the userIds property to identify which users get automatic updates.

  3. Handle adaptiveCard/action invoke requests in your bot.

  4. Use the invoke request's context to respond back with cards that are created for a user.

    Note

    Whenever your bot returns a new card as a result of processing an Action.Execute, the response must conform to the response format.

Schema for Universal Actions for Adaptive Cards

Universal Actions for Adaptive Cards are introduced in the Adaptive Cards schema version 1.5. To use Adaptive Card effectively, the version property of your Adaptive Card must be set to 1.5.

Note

Setting the version property to 1.5 makes your Adaptive Card incompatible with older clients of the platforms or applications, such as Outlook and Teams, as they do not support the Universal Actions for Adaptive Cards.

If you set the card version to less than 1.5 and use either or both, refresh property and Action.Execute, the following happens:

Client Behavior
Teams Your card stops working. Card isn't refreshed and Action.Execute doesn't render depending on the version of the Teams client. To ensure maximum compatibility in Teams, define Action.Execute with an Action.Submit in the fallback property.

For more information on how to support older clients, see backward compatibility.

Action.Execute

When authoring Adaptive Cards, replace Action.Submit and Action.Http with Action.Execute. The schema for Action.Execute is similar to that of Action.Submit.

For more information, see Action.Execute schema and properties.

Now, you can use the refresh model to allow Adaptive Cards to update automatically.

Refresh model

To automatically refresh your Adaptive Card, define its refresh property, which embeds an action of type Action.Execute and an userIds array.

For more information, see refresh schema and properties.

User IDs in refresh

The following are the features of UserIds in refresh:

  • UserIds is an array of user MRIs, which is part of the refresh property in Adaptive Cards.

  • If the userIds list property is specified as userIds: [] in the refresh section of the card, the card isn't automatically refreshed. Instead, a Refresh Card option is displayed to the user in the triple dot menu in Teams web client or desktop and in the long press context menu in Teams mobile, that is, Android or iOS to manually refresh the card. Alternatively, you may choose to skip userIds in the refresh property altogether in case the scenario involves <=60 members in Teams group chats or channels. The Teams client automatically invokes refresh calls for all the users if the group or channel has <=60 users.

  • UserIds property is added because channels in Teams can include a large number of members. If all members are viewing the channel at the same time, an unconditional automatic refresh results in many concurrent calls to the bot. The userIds property must always be included to identify which users must get an automatic refresh with a maximum of 60 (sixty) user MRIs.

  • You can fetch Teams conversation member's user MRIs. For more information on how to add in userIds list in refresh section of Adaptive Card, see fetch roster or user profile.

You can get the user MRI for personal chats, group chats, or channels using the following example:

  1. Using TurnContext

    userMRI= turnContext.Activity.From.Id

  2. Using GetMemberAsync method

    var member = await TeamsInfo.GetMemberAsync(turnContext, turnContext.Activity.From.Id, cancellationToken);var userMRI = member.Id;

  • Sample Teams user MRI is 29:1bSnHZ7Js2STWrgk6ScEErLk1Lp2zQuD5H2qQ960rtvstKp8tKLl-3r8b6DoW0QxZimuTxk_kupZ1DBMpvIQQUAZL-PNj0EORDvRZXy8kvWk

Note

The userIds property is ignored in Outlook, and the refresh property is always automatically activated. There is no scale issue in Outlook because users view the card at different times.

Next step is to use the adaptiveCard/action invoke activity to understand what request must be made after Action.Execute is executed.

adaptiveCard/action invoke activity

When Action.Execute is executed in the client, a new type of Invoke activity adaptiveCard/action is made to your bot.

For more information, see request format and properties for a typical adaptiveCard/action invoke activity.

For more information, see response format and properties for a typical adaptiveCard/action invoke activity with supported response types.

Next, you can apply backward compatibility to older clients across different platforms and make your Adaptive Card compatible.

Backward compatibility

Universal Actions for Adaptive Cards allow you to set properties that enable backward compatibility with older versions of Outlook and Teams.

Teams

To ensure backward compatibility of your Adaptive Cards with older versions of Teams, you must include the fallback property and set its value to Action.Submit. Also, your bot code must process both Action.Execute and Action.Submit.

For more information, see backward compatibility on Teams.

Code samples

Sample name Description .NET Node.js Manifest
Teams catering bot This sample shows a bot that accepts food order using Adaptive Cards. View NA NA
Sequential Workflows Adaptive Cards This sample demonstrates the implementation of Sequential Workflows, User Specific Views, and current Adaptive Cards in bots. View View View

See also