What’s New in App Studio – October 2018

Microsoft Teams team

Over the last month we’ve added powerful new functionality to App Studio. Building on our momentum from our last set of updates, these features make it easier for developers to build high quality apps on the Teams platform. We’re excited to share these new features with you and give you a quick primer on their functionality.

Create a Teams bot in a single click

Previously, creating and registering a bot in App Studio required navigating to the Microsoft App portal, creating an AAD app, taking that registration info to Bot Framework, registering a bot, and then bringing that info into your manifest. Now, you can simply click a button and we take care of all of that work on your behalf.

How it works

Simply open App Studio as normal then navigate to the Manifest editor. Once there navigate to the bot capability and click “Set up” to begin registering and configuring your bot. Now all you have to do is simply name your bot, configure a few settings, and you’re done.

Registering a new Teams bot in App Studio

Once registration is complete you can manage your bot settings directly from App Studio as before.
Managing a bot with an existing registration in App Studio is also a bit easier. We’ve replaced a somewhat clunky flow which required changes in the Bot Framework portal. Now when you select “Existing bot” you can simply select from a new drop down menu. This allows you to pick from all of the bots you have access to.

Choose an existing Bot Framework bot in App Studio

These improvements also apply to compose extensions as they are powered by bots under the hood.

Card Editor

We’ve began a redesign of the card editor that for the first time allows you to work on and save multiple cards, as well as provides a cleaner and more user friendly overall design for the tool. You can now create edit and save multiple cards.
A redesigned card editor
To create a new card, simply navigate to the Card editor tab of the App Studio and click “Create a new card”. You may then select between creating a Hero, Thumbnail, or Adaptive Card. Selecting a Hero or Thumbnail card presents the card builder, JSON editor, and a code preview experience that you are familiar with. If you choose to create an Adaptive Card, you’re presented with a JSON editor, code preview, and a new live card preview experience.
 Choose which kind of card you'd like to make

Adaptive Card Support

With support for adaptive cards, you can now use a built in JSON editor to write and preview adaptive cards. You have the ability to view a live preview of your card from within the Card editor, or have App Studio send you the card via our bot, so that you can see what the card looks like in the context of a chat message. We hope to bring the live preview of cards to all card types supported by App Studio as well as a better card building experience for Adaptive Cards in the coming months.
In context card previews

Manifest version 1.3 support

App Studio supports all features in manifest version 1.3.

Wrapping Up

We continue to receive great feedback on App Studio. We hope to keep up our effort to empower developers to build quality Teams apps. As always, please feel free to provide feedback using the feedback link in the lower left corner of Microsoft Teams. If you have suggestions on how to make Teams better, submit your idea via UserVoice or vote for existing ideas to help us prioritize requests. We read every piece of feedback that we receive to make sure that Microsoft Teams meets your needs.

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