Connect a bot to Azure Communication Services

Azure Communication Services provides the APIs and SDKs to build multi-participant collaboration applications that can include a bot. This bot can greet users, perform intake tasks to determine the topic, and answer questions. Azure Communication Services allows you to hand off the conversation to a human agent. It also enables a supervisor or additional bot to monitor or participate in the conversation if necessary. Additionally, Azure Communication Services offers a UI library to easily build conversational user experiences that can be embedded into your existing web pages.

Prerequisites

• Knowledge of the Basics of the Bot Framework Service and how to Create a bot with the Bot Framework SDK.
• A published bot that you want to connect to the channel.
• An Azure account with a current subscription. If you don't have one, create a free account before you begin.
• An Azure Communication Services resource. If you don't have one, see Create an Azure Communication Services resource.
• .NET 6.0 or later.
• Visual Studio 2022 or later.

Connect your bot to Azure Communication Services

1. In the Azure portal, go to your bot resource.
2. Open the Channels blade and select Communication Services - Chat.
3. On the Configure Communication blade, connect to your Azure Communication Services resource and save. For more information, see the Azure Communication Services documentation on how to enable the Azure Communication Services channel.

Your bot is now registered with Azure Communication Services.

Create a chat app and add your bot as a participant

Now that your bot is registered with Azure Communication Services, you can create a chat thread with your bot as a participant. For more information, see Add a bot to your chat app in the Azure Communication Services documentation.

Additional information

The Azure Communications Services channel has a limit of 28 KB for message activities.

Next steps

• For information on how to hand off the conversation to a human agent, see Transition conversations from bot to human for more information.
• For information about channel support in the Bot Connector Service, see Connect a bot to channels.
• For information about building bots, see How bots work and the Create a bot with the Bot Framework SDK quickstart.
• For information about deploying bots, see Deploy your bot and Set up continuous deployment.
• For information about Azure Communication Services UI Library