officedev/microsoft-teams-apps-company-communicator

Company Communicator app template

Company Communicator App Template

Architecture	Documentation	Deployment guide powershell	Deployment guide	User manual

Company Communicator is a custom Teams app that enables corporate teams to create and send messages intended for multiple teams or large number of employees over chat allowing organization to reach employees right where they collaborate. Use this template for multiple scenarios, such as new initiative announcements, employee onboarding, modern learning and development, or organization-wide broadcasts.

The app provides an easy interface for designated users to create, preview, collaborate and send messages. It's also a foundation for building custom targeted communication capabilities, such as custom telemetry on how many users acknowledged or interacted with a message.

Key features

• Message creation: Easily create messages by using a team tab where team members who are permissioned can collaborate and create messages.
• Audience selection: Pick from four options to target audience. Send to general channel of selected teams, send in 1:1 chat to members of selected teams, send to all users who have the app installed or send to M365 groups, distribution lists or security groups.
• Message metrics: Export messages delivery report.
• Localization: Supports multiple locales.
• Accessibility Compliant: Company Communicator v5.4.1 is in compliant with Microsoft accessibility standards for Web, Windows and Mac OS.
• Feedback: Submit your feedback to the product team.

Get started

Begin with the Solution overview to read about what the app does and how it works.

When you're ready to try out Company Communicator, or to use it in your own organization, you can choose to follow one of the below guides.

• Deployment guide powershell.
  • Recommended Use this option to deploy the latest version of Company Communicator using powershell script. The entire set-up is done by the powershell script.
• Deployment guide.
  • Use this option to deploy the latest version of Company Communicator with client secrets.
• Deployment guide certificate.
  • Use this option to deploy the latest version of Company Communicator with certificates.

Migration

If you already have older version of Company Communicator installed, then please use this v5 migration guide. Please note that deploying the major version update, like the latest version of Company Communicator involves more than syncing the App Service and Azure Functions, so plan to review the migration guide before migrating to latest.

Migrating to newer versions.

• v5 migration guide
• v4 migration guide
• v3 migration guide
• v2 migration guide

Feedback

Thoughts? Questions? Ideas? Share them with us here

Please report bugs and other code issues here.

Legal notice

This app template is provided under the MIT License terms. In addition to these terms, by using this app template you agree to the following:

• You, not Microsoft, will license the use of your app to users or organization.

• This app template is not intended to substitute your own regulatory due diligence or make you or your app compliant with respect to any applicable regulations, including but not limited to privacy, healthcare, employment, or financial regulations.

• You are responsible for complying with all applicable privacy and security regulations including those related to use, collection and handling of any personal data by your app. This includes complying with all internal privacy and security policies of your organization if your app is developed to be sideloaded internally within your organization. Where applicable, you may be responsible for data related incidents or data subject requests for data collected through your app.

• Any trademarks or registered trademarks of Microsoft in the United States and/or other countries and logos included in this repository are the property of Microsoft, and the license for this project does not grant you rights to use any Microsoft names, logos or trademarks outside of this repository. Microsoft’s general trademark guidelines can be found here.

• If the app template enables access to any Microsoft Internet-based services (e.g., Office365), use of those services will be subject to the separately-provided terms of use. In such cases, Microsoft may collect telemetry data related to app template usage and operation. Use and handling of telemetry data will be performed in accordance with such terms of use.

• Use of this template does not guarantee acceptance of your app to the Teams app store. To make this app available in the Teams app store, you will have to comply with the submission and validation process, and all associated requirements such as including your own privacy statement and terms of use for your app.

Contributing

This project welcomes contributions and suggestions. Most contributions require you to agree to a Contributor License Agreement (CLA) declaring that you have the right to, and actually do, grant us the rights to use your contribution. For details, visit https://cla.microsoft.com.

When you submit a pull request, a CLA-bot will automatically determine whether you need to provide a CLA and decorate the PR appropriately (e.g., label, comment). Simply follow the instructions provided by the bot. You will only need to do this once across all repos using our CLA.

This project has adopted the Microsoft Open Source Code of Conduct. For more information see the Code of Conduct FAQ or contact [email protected] with any additional questions or comments.

microsoft-teams-apps-company-communicator's Issues

Send Function Failing with Error "Error fetching bot access token"

The authors app fails to send messages all the time, I double checked all the values but couldn't find anything specific. I feel like something is missing and I would appreciate if someone can guide me.

Thanks in advance.

Login Loop

After adding the application inside the Teams, the signing process keeps in loop.
We successfully log in the application inside Teams, and in the end, the application requests a new sign-in.
This happens for the readers and for the authors.

404 errors from users who have left the tenant should not be reported as delivery failure

404 errors are reported as errors in the delivery report. Instead we should:

1. Remove users from the table who have left the tenant
2. When a 404 is encountered, remove the user from the list of recipients and do not report the error. We still want to log this event, as a warning.

Authors ConfigTab - Error

When attempting to add the Author Tab (ConfigTab) - it errors out after about 30 seconds "There was a problem reaching this app".

Validated all the web service configurations, read all the other issues in this repo.
I've also validated all the App Registration settings, authentication, and bot settings.
the website itself is working, without error. In fact, the analytics show data in/data out, and no errors http 5xx. So the web service seems healthy.

Any help to debug the config tab would be appreciated.

Not able to upload Teams Package -Step 5

I get the following error when I try to upload the teams package Into Microsoft Teams-
Error while extracting package: Please ensure there are no folders in your app package and that your app package contains only the manifest.json and the two required icon files at its root level.

I have ensured that there are no folders or subfolders in the package. Any Ideas on how can this be resolved?

Code deployment failures for web app

See https://github.com/OfficeDev/microsoft-teams-company-communicator-app/wiki/Troubleshooting#1-code-deployment-failure

Authentication Error

When attempting to launch the authors version of the app, I receive the following:

Selected user account does not exist in tenant 'Microsoft' and cannot access the application '124bbb31-9612-484e-94fb-e01659aaf274' in that tenant. The account needs to be added as an external user in the tenant first. Please use a different account.

The app is installed in an Azure subscription that is separate from the O365 tenant. Authentication for the app was set to "Accounts in any organizational directory (Any Azure AD directory - Multitenant)" per the setup instructions.

Step 2.11 The Deployment "Outputs" Tab shows no outputs

The Deployment was successful. In Step 2.11, it says to note down the values in the Deployment "Outputs" tab but it is empty. Please see the screenshot below-

Any help on this matter would be greatly appreciated!

Error when adding tab to authors team

We are getting this error when trying to add the authors tab.

An error occurred while starting the application.
.NET Core 4.6.27817.01 X86 v4.0.0.0 | Microsoft.AspNetCore.Hosting version 2.1.1-rtm-30846 | Microsoft Windows 10.0.14393 | Need help?

Image Embedding to Message

Hi,

I am not sure if this is the right question to ask in this formum or not. We are able to use Company Communicator effectively. However there is a requirement to send the Broad cast with embedded image which works very well with PNG format , however when we copy the Image (Image is stored in shared location which can be accessed through public network) with PDF it's not reflecting in the message Preview
Below are the screen shots of working an working

Non-Working Scenario

How i can make other format files to be visible as an Image in Communicator app message while composing.

We couldn´t find any matches

I published the app yesterday, and tried to send out some messages to some teams or users.
Unfortunately I always get the message:"We couldn´t find any matches"

Unability to log into my corporate account via Linux app

Hi,

I am unable to log into my corporate account via Teams on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS with teams_1.2.00.32451_amd64.deb.

On third login page (after "Taking you to your organization's sign-in page" step) there is an inactive "Submit" button:

Button push (after correct input of login\password) produces next error in console:

(node:1778) UnhandledPromiseRejectionWarning: Error: Unknown or unsupported transport “disabled” for address “disabled:”
(node:1778) UnhandledPromiseRejectionWarning: Unhandled promise rejection. This error originated either by throwing inside of an async function without a catch block, or by rejecting a promise which was not handled with .catch(). (rejection id: 2)

Reply to messages

Are replies to messages in the bot supposed to work?

I can successfully send chat messages to team members but replies in the bot chat window disappear. Is this expected?

Request failed with status code 403

Hello,
I encountered these issues (see image).
so to make my self clear I am using my personal Gmail account registered to the azure CLI,
making all the resources was very easy and worked perfectly.
after adding the tab to my Team this error happened
"Sorry, you do not have permission to access this page. Please contact your administrator to be granted permission."

Stuck on Sending messages

Hi,

I was following the deployment guide and I'm already at the end part. I already installed the app in Teams but I'm stuck in sending messages. Any ideas what I've done wrong?

Thanks!

Send to all user - Sends to all teams users regardless of Company Communicator Installation

I have an issue in that the experience I am having of the Company Communicator application is different to the documentation. I noted in limitations that for a user to receive a message they need the application installed, I take it this is referring to the Company Communicator User App.

I send a test message (Send in chat to everyone) and the message is sent to all Teams users regardless of company communicator user app installation status and regardless of Team membership.

I did find the documentation a bit ambiguous in that there is mention to the App and i am uncertain if it is referring to Teams as the app or company communicator as the app. Company communicator is registered in app services.

Is the limitation information incorrect or am I experiencing something unique here or when the limitation documentation mentions to the App is it referring to Microsoft Teams?

Failures -more information is needed

After having random sent failures (which we could not replicate because on each dispatch, different recipients failed to receive the message), some more information would be needed to troubleshoot the problem. The information included in the failed sent notifications only a Status code (403 in our case) is included which does not provide enough information on how to triage the actual problem. On Application Insights we could locate the related failed entries.

More information should be included on the failed dispatches in order to have the necessary information to troubleshoot those failures.

ARM Template Deployment Fails - ELIFECYCLE Error

We were pleased to see the .Net bug was fixed with the latest version of the application; however, we are experiencing a new issue with the deployment. Each time we attempt to redeploy the webapp we receive the following error:

App
> react-scripts build

Creating an optimized production build...
Failed to compile.

./src/components/SignInPage/signInPage.scss
Error: ENOENT: no such file or directory, scandir 'D:\home\site\repository\Source\Microsoft.Teams.Apps.CompanyCommunicator\ClientApp\node_modules\node-sass\vendor'


npm ERR! code ELIFECYCLE
npm ERR! errno 1
npm ERR! [email protected] build: `react-scripts build`
npm ERR! Exit status 1
npm ERR! 
npm ERR! Failed at the [email protected] build script.
npm ERR! This is probably not a problem with npm. There is likely additional logging output above.

npm ERR! A complete log of this run can be found in:
npm ERR!     D:\local\AppData\npm-cache\_logs\2020-07-07T14_03_03_233Z-debug.log
Failed exitCode=1, command=npm run build
An error has occurred during web site deployment.
npm WARN [email protected] requires a peer of sass@^1.3.0 but none is installed. You must install peer dependencies yourself.\r\nnpm WARN [email protected] requires a peer of fibers@>= 3.1.0 but none is installed. You must install peer dependencies yourself.\r\n\r\nnpm ERR! code ELIFECYCLE\r\nnpm ERR! errno 1\r\nnpm ERR! [email protected] build: `react-scripts build`\r\nnpm ERR! Exit status 1\r\nnpm ERR! \r\nnpm ERR! Failed at the [email protected] build script.\r\nnpm ERR! This is probably not a problem with npm. There is likely additional logging output above.\r\n\r\nnpm ERR! A complete log of this run can be found in:\r\nnpm ERR!     D:\local\AppData\npm-cache\_logs\2020-07-07T14_03_03_233Z-debug.log\r\nD:\Program Files (x86)\SiteExtensions\Kudu\87.20522.4610\bin\Scripts\starter.cmd deploy.cmd

This looks like a possible fix for the issue, but we have not tested it yet: microsoft/Oryx#605 (comment)

Not able to upload the users manifest to the managed apps

Since in my environment we have blocked to upload custom app for all users, hence the only way is to to upload the company communicator(User) to the manage apps(teams admin console) and apply to all users as side icon. However when i try to add upload the company communicator app i was not able to do so and getting below error

We can't upload the app. Please try again. If you continue to have problems

Unable to send Images using company communicator

Apart from above issue,send messages to specific people is also not sending to people with in organization

Bot not tracking the newly installed Team Personal App user id?

Message are not notified/sent to users who have installed the user Teams app (company-communicator-users). Initially it was worked for two users after that for new users it is not sending messages. In the Author app i can see messages are sent to only two users.

I have checked the Storage table only two entries are there ? as I have installed this "USER" app for three more users its not getting displayed for them?

Could you please help me out asap??

Deployment error due to .Net version 3.1.301 SDK on Azure Web App

The default .Net SDK on Azure Web App has moved to 3.1.301
The current ARM template deployment fails with following error
{ "status": "Failed", "error": { "code": "ResourceDeploymentFailure", "message": "The resource operation completed with terminal provisioning state 'Failed'." } }

The error comes from the deployment of the .Net app on the web app with the following error message
Command: deploy.cmd Handling ASP.NET Core Web Application deployment. Restoring NuGet packages MSBUILD : error MSB1025: An internal failure occurred while running MSBuild. System.ComponentModel.Win32Exception (5): Access is denied. at System.Diagnostics.Process.set_PriorityClassCore(ProcessPriorityClass value) at System.Diagnostics.Process.set_PriorityClass(ProcessPriorityClass value) Unhandled exception. System.ComponentModel.Win32Exception (5): Access is denied. at Microsoft.Build.CommandLine.MSBuildApp.Execute(String[] commandLine) at System.Diagnostics.Process.set_PriorityClassCore(ProcessPriorityClass value) Failed exitCode=-532462766, command=dotnet restore "D:\home\site\repository\Source\Microsoft.Teams.Apps.CompanyCommunicator.sln" at System.Diagnostics.Process.set_PriorityClass(ProcessPriorityClass value) An error has occurred during web site deployment. at Microsoft.Build.CommandLine.MSBuildApp.Execute(String[] commandLine) at Microsoft.Build.CommandLine.MSBuildApp.Main(String[] args) Unhandled exception. System.ComponentModel.Win32Exception (5): Access is denied.\r\n at System.Diagnostics.Process.set_PriorityClassCore(ProcessPriorityClass value)\r\n at System.Diagnostics.Process.set_PriorityClass(ProcessPriorityClass value)\r\n at Microsoft.Build.CommandLine.MSBuildApp.Execute(String[] commandLine)\r\n at Microsoft.Build.CommandLine.MSBuildApp.Main(String[] args)\r\nD:\Program Files (x86)\SiteExtensions\Kudu\87.20522.4610\bin\Scripts\starter.cmd deploy.cmd

A workaround can be found based on the instructiions provided here asking for a specific version of the .Net SDK (3.1.202)
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/62595408/error-access-is-denied-deployment-to-azure-app-services

This unfortunaltely works only if the web app has the 2 verions installed (which may not be the case with new deployments)

Unable to Find Teams within the Organisation

We are currently having an issue with the Author side of the app where we can only communicate with the Team that has the Author app embedded within it.

Correct me if I am wrong, we were under the impression you would be able to send comms cards to individual teams or members of individual teams across the organisation.

Please confirm, any advice would be appreciated.

Preview different to Actual Message

We just wanted to understand why a sent message format is different to the format when previewed?

See attached example

Resend functionality only to failed recipients

On an installation with around 8K users, on some enterprise-wide messages the intended recipients will be all of them. After having a few failed dispatches, currently there is a no way to resend the message only to failed ones or no easy way to target them on a subsequent duplicated message.

Feature request: Would it possible to add an option to resend a message when there are failures, to the recipients for which the previous dispatch failed.

Application installation with Microsoft Teams policies

When I install the Company Communicator to multiple users, using Microsoft Teams application / permission policies, the application installs correctly but the user ID (29: XXX) is not registered in the Users table.

If the user manually installs the Company Communicator, the user ID is recorded in the table.

Message summary ignoring all newlines in the text

When preparing the message using Author's app, we can put newlines just by pressing enter between multiple paragraphs, but when that message is delivered, it removes all the additional lines from the message. It also doesn't seem to respect some of the markdown symbols like \n\n.

Author screen:

What recipients see:

Authors ConfigTab - unavailable

I got this error after deploy to the Authors' team.
I did all the steps following the guide V2,
Except that I found Step 4 that has some warnings:

I'm not sure if it's caused by this, I am still waiting for my Admin's approval.

Multi-tenant configuration

Is it mandatory to configure this app in AAD as multi-tenant? This app is going to be used by our internal users only, but not sure why the documentation still insists on using a multi-tenant configuration.

Chat notification popup is redirecting to Apps Page

Hi..
I have deployed communication app and noticed on Desktop client chat notifications are redirecting to Apps Page instead of directly opening the chat. This is stopping us for deploying the app for all users.

singin loop

Hi, I installed the app, and when try to singin its loads and than go back to sinf in loop. my acc has added the valid upns ... could you please chec that ?

Deployment Guide Step 3-14

In the deployment guide step 3, item 14. Repeat the previous two steps, but with client ID = 1fec8e78-bce4-4aaf-ab1b-5451cc387264. May I know where this client ID is from?

Group Based Management of Authors

Hello, I was wondering is it possible to manage authors for the company communicator app with a Security Group instead of UPNs?

Chat notification popup is redirecting to Apps Page and NOT to the message sent by the BOT

I configured the Company communicator App and deployed to multiple users using Teams Setup policy. The issue is when any message is sent to the users using the BOT Author interface, users get a a message notification that "Company Communicator sent a card", but when users click on that notification, they get redirected to "Apps" screen instead of the message.

Is the content of the Known-limitations page old?

In the following document, "Message throttling" and "No retries" are considered current restrictions.
https://github.com/OfficeDev/microsoft-teams-company-communicator-app/wiki/Known-limitations

But with the following fix, retries seem to be already implemented.
#123

If it's not my misconception, is the content of the wiki delayed to fix?

Sign-in Issue

After uploading Author Package to MS teams, i added the authors app to team(Author defined as admin in that team). The issue when author navigate to company communicator Tab, it keep showing message say "Please sign in to continue". when click on sign-in it gives me windows attached and even when i sign in with admin, it still same.

Any thoughts

step 11 inquiry

on step 11 "Once the deployment has finished, go to the deployment's "Outputs" tab", i couldn't find that outputs tab. please advise on that tab path.

Regards,

After adding App manifest in Teams I am getting Permission Error

I did Azure app deployment and Registration without any errors. But after adding Manifest package in the Teams, the app got added when I click the Tab I getting below permission error.
"Sorry, you do not have permission to access this page. Please contact your administrator to be granted permission".

Where to give the permission?

Communicator Deployment fails

I'm facing a new problem with Communicator when deploying using the master branch (haven't tried using other branches). Pls see the error message below. Has anyone encountered this?

{
"code": "DeploymentFailed",
"message": "At least one resource deployment operation failed. Please list deployment operations for details. Please see https://aka.ms/DeployOperations for usage details.",
"details": [
{
"code": "Conflict",
"message": "{\r\n "status": "Failed",\r\n "error": {\r\n "code": "ResourceDeploymentFailure",\r\n "message": "The resource operation completed with terminal provisioning state 'Failed'."\r\n }\r\n}"
}
]
}

{ "id": "/subscriptions/9649282e-6ae7-4488-b646-195a841fca77/resourceGroups/azrg-eut-eoc-managed-prod/providers/Microsoft.Resources/deployments/Microsoft.Template/operations/D7189BA20740A200", "operationId": "D7189BA20740A200", "properties": { "provisioningOperation": "Create", "provisioningState": "Failed", "timestamp": "2019-11-29T13:58:39.3276151Z", "duration": "PT1H5M13.4637209S", "trackingId": "feb6efb5-54db-4603-9017-f8acf3683abb", "statusCode": "Conflict", "statusMessage": { "status": "Failed", "error": { "code": "ResourceDeploymentFailure", "message": "The resource operation completed with terminal provisioning state 'Failed'." } }, "targetResource": { "id": "/subscriptions/9649282e-6ae7-4488-b646-195a841fca77/resourceGroups/azrg-eut-eoc-managed-prod/providers/Microsoft.Web/sites/eytechprod/sourcecontrols/web", "resourceType": "Microsoft.Web/sites/sourcecontrols", "resourceName": "eytechprod/web" } }}

Ooops! An unexpected error seems to have occured. Why not try refreshing your page? Or you can contact your administrator if the problem persists.

Hi All. I have done everything as per the deployment guide, yet unfortunately when trying to preview or send the message I am getting a generic error message: "Ooops! An unexpected error seems to have occured. Why not try refreshing your page? Or you can contact your administrator if the problem persists.". Any idea on how to get past it? Thank you.

Stuck in Login Loop in Authors App

Hi,

I just deployed the company communicator to my tenant and have added it to Teams as an admin. I then added the app to a test-team for authors, but I now get stuck in a login loop whenever I want to login to the authors app in order to create messages.

Teams only shows me a couple of screens in very fast motion and I then land back on the "sign in" screen without being able to type or do anything.

Does anyone know how to fix this issue?

Thanks in advance for your help!

Is it possible to embed an Image in summary as well

Is it possible to embed an Image in summary as well, something like this -

• Just select Raise your hand Raise your hand in the meeting controls.

• Meeting presenters will also receive a notification that your hand is raised, and they can lower your hand once you've had a chance to talk.

Currently, it appears like this -

How to know the number of recipients who have received or using the Custom app in teams?

Hi Guys,

Not sure if this is the best platform to ask but is there a way to identify the number of users who have received the message / Card once the Custom app is deployed manually or via policy in MS Teams?

I can see it gives the recipient status for success, failure and warning but does not have anything to indicate the actual person in those categories.

can we get such logs via Azure? if yes could you share the steps how to enable and activate the feature?

Add Tab not working

I've uploaded the zip to teams, when i go to add it as a tab it appears to be stuck and doesnt allow me to save as per screenshot.

any ideas?

Step 3.8 Error while setting the link next to the Application ID URI

I followed the steps for setting the link and used the format listed api://[BaseResourceName].azurewebsites.net but I get an error message as listed in the screenshot below.

Kindly help!

Installing 'Authors' app gives 'Something went wrong' msg box

I followed the excellent install instructions to the 't' and successfully uploaded both apps to Teams:

The 'Company Communicator' app appears to have installed OK:

But when I try and install the 'Authors' app I get this msg:

I am not a dev so am amazed I got this far, is there a trick to installing the Authors app that I am unaware of?

TIA, Nigel

Replies to Bot Messages?

Hello!

You've had this asked previously, but, no response was given.

We've added the Communicator App to Teams for specific Groups and also as a Teams Application for Users. If users reply to the bot the messages go through without error, but we're subsequently unable to find them.. do those go anywhere or is it just an empty feedback loop? We're not sure if we need to be seeking out those messages to reply, and if we are, where we can find them.

Thanks kindly

How can we tell why there are failures when sending a communication

We are sending communications to roughly 300K users and have seen at the last send there were about 13K failures. Is there a way to tell why these failed, which users may have received the failure (so we can check and see if the communication was finally received), etc.

Here is a list of the the recent sends & failures, as you can see the failures are increasing and we need to know why.

Date Started | Date completed | Success | Failures | Duration
6/11/2020   9:40 PM | 6/12/2020   1:39 AM | 297986 | 13354 | 3:58:07
5/28/2020   5:53 PM | 5/28/2020   9:32 PM | 303756 | 3060 | 3:39:13
5/14/2020   11:25 PM | 5/15/2020   3:27 AM | 300467 | 1929 | 4:01:50
4/23/2020   11:12 PM | 4/24/2020   1:53 AM | 293227 | 722 | 2:40:30
4/9/2020   1:04 AM | 4/9/2020   3:42 AM | 282482 | 438 | 2:37:38
3/23/2020   12:54 AM | 3/23/2020   2:37 AM | 214566 | 189 | 1:43:18

Application not working from IOS Iphone 11 pro max

Hello All application not working from mobile device (Iphone) and give me this error message sorry an error occurred while trying to access this service

Whitelisting for higher limits

Hi, thanks for the extensive documentation, it's been very useful.

I've got one question about a phrase in the 'known limitations' section:

Unless your bot is whitelisted for higher limits, the bot's attempt at sending a message will get throttled at 8,000 messages every 30 minutes (rolling window)

My clients tenant has 40.000 users, so we easily hit the 8.000 messages. Can you please explain more on the white listing? I can't find any documentation on it. Is there a possibility to whitelist a bot for larger tenants?

thanks in advance!