Microsoft 365 Community Adaptive Cards, 15 Jul 2022

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From YouTube: Adaptive Cards community call – July 2022

Description

In this month’s community call the following topics were presented - Action.ToggleVisibility Deprecation (a non-breaking change for a control that needs to support accessibility requirements for all users), GA release for Adaptive Cards Handle Responses Connector, teaser on the React Native Adaptive Cards Renderer capability used in Microsoft Viva Connections mobile app to be demoed next month, and a 10-minute Q&A covering a host of topics - release schedule, integration, challenges and demo requests. This call was hosted by J.P. Roca (Microsoft) | @jpthepm. Recorded on July 14, 2022.

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A

Welcome everyone to the july adaptive cards community call. uh We have a lot of topics to cover today, but I don't think we'll take the whole time. The first topic on the list is action. Toggle visibility, deprecation next, we'll talk about the adaptive cards, hand, responses connector that was featured in. I think last month's community call, if not the month before that and we'll end off with the react native adaptive cards renderer and the q, a section action, dot, toggle visibility, deprecation for those that might not be familiar with action.toggle visibility.

A

This is an action type that was introduced in schema 1.2 for adaptive cards, as the name suggests it toggles the visibility of the associated card elements. As you can see in the gif there.

A

You click the action button in this case toggle and it'll open up and show you the the associated elements that were tied with action.toggle visibility.

A

Now, where are we actually deprecating? Action.Toggle visibility? uh The main reason is that it's not accessible by screen narrators the way the control is implemented.

A

uh The screen narrator does not detect that the text has changed or there's more content on the screen, and due to this, we have a large number of accessibility bugs that are opened on us uh related to action, dot, toggle visibility uh fixing this with the current implementation of action. Toggle visibility would require a major rewrite of of the action.

A

What will change after deprecating action.title visibility, so the first thing will be that the documentation will be updated to clearly indicate that action.toggle visibility has been deprecated. uh Action.Title facility will not continue to receive any future updates, but existing and future implementations will continue to work as expected.

A

How will this impact card authors, if you are currently using actional, toggle visibility? Everything will continue to work as it has in the past. In fact, very little is going to change. You will still be able to use action.toggle visibility in the future, and the control will behave exactly as it behaves today. The only thing is that you should keep in mind and be aware that using action.toggle visibility is not accessible to all users. This will be something that we indicate in the documentation as well. When we call out that action.

A

toggle visibility will be getting deprecated and the the main reason for this, it's more of a formality change instead of a functional change, so the action will be indicated as deprecated, but card authors will still be able to use the the action it'll behave exactly as as it does we're just making it more clear that it is not an accessible control and we will be working on a better solution with that. We'll talk about the path forward, so the the team will be working on a proper expander control that meets accessibility requirements.

A

uh This control will function instead of simulating the behavior of an expander will actually be an expander and hopefully, will be detected by by screen narrators, which is the main goal is making the control more accessible to all users.

A

It will be our recommended implementation and the eta for this work is currently to be determined issue number seven, six, seven eight is the feature request issue for action.toggle visibility, work and it'd be super helpful for our team to know how you're currently using action, dot, toggle visibility, if you even are using it, and what would you like to see in the future implementation of the expander control, uh just as a reminder as mentioned previously, this will not be a very impactful change.

A

It will not break action.type visibility, implementations that are already existing, it's more of a formality, change that will occur in our documentation to indicate that we won't be updating action of toggle visibility and we'll be working on a better implementation instead and with that moving into a little more exciting news is that the adaptive cards handle responses. Connector has finally released into production.

A

This was a feature that we presented um two months ago in the community call if you were not able to attend, you can find all the recordings to our previous community calls in the m365 developer, youtube channel.

A

It's it's a very cool feature and you can try it out at flow.microsoft.com.

A

You will need to create an msa account if you don't have one already and you can find the documentation with that link that I sent in the chat and for people that are watching that are not attending the call, whether it's via youtube or any other medium. You can find the links in the description of the video. We will provide all those links.

A

Just as a reminder. The connector looks like this image that we have pasted here. You put in an input, adaptive card and then the card type id which is chosen by you, you can indicate which card type id and this is what will be used in order to track and handle the responses with that, given adaptive card in microsoft teams.

A

Finally, the react native adaptive cards render. It is developed and maintained by big think code, and recently it has even been used in the microsoft viva connections, mobile app. So this is super exciting and if you are able to join us next month, the sun from big think code we'll be presenting about how the microsoft viva connections app uses the react, native adaptive cards render and other cool uses for for this renderer. I'm super excited about this call, so if you are able to attend next month, I highly encourage you to to attend this.

A

This call we can move on to the q a section there's, probably a lot of questions about toggle visibility. If you have any I'd, be happy to answer those hugo asked in the chat. When will the win ui 3.0 render be available. um That's a great question hugo.

A

I do not believe our team is actively working on building the win. Ui 3 renderer. I know there was some previous work in and us looking to to migrate over into using win ui3, but I can't give an eta right now for for when that work will be completed.

A

If I were to to make an educated guess, I would say: would it be completed by this quarter and yes, the the link for flow.microsoft.com we'll be changing to make.powerautomate.com, but I do think you can still redirect read direct to that link using flow.microsoft.com brad jones is asking. Can you please provide an update with regards to version 1.6, so with version 1.6, we have already implemented a new control, which is the carousel control.

A

We are still in preview and haven't released the schema changes for for that, just yet we're hoping to get that done by this quarter, making the 1.6 release. If everything goes well with our engineering timelines, then I think we we should be able to achieve this.

A

If not, it will follow shortly after our team is very busy and occupied with our announcement in build, which will be supporting a new way to use adaptive cards and that'll, be super exciting as well, and once we finish up everything with regards to 1.6, we'll be able to to provide the the release for 1.6 if you're interested and curious about what will be coming in version, 1.6 you're always able to go into our preview designer, which I will link in the chat right now.

A

um This will sort of provide you a preview of what you can expect and what will be coming in version. 1.6 gareth is asking: have you heard anything about incorporating loop components? uh This is a great question. Gareth we or I recently met with um with the person, that's managing the loop components, effort here at microsoft, and they are very excited about adaptive cards. um It's it'll it'll be a big part of loop components and they're actively working on it. Do you have like any other questions on that?

A

Is there a specific feature with loop components that you're looking for or or just general information? I can also follow up with you and provide you some contacts. If you have more more specific questions on on loop components, the latest information we have is that it's it's a very important effort for microsoft and the team that's building it is is actively working on it. So I think it'll be great once it finally hits um production.

B

Yeah it'll take away a lot of uh a lot of you know the slowness with the refreshing cards and the responsiveness. I think it will change the world on that front, so everything will be a little bit more interactive. Ideally.

A

Yeah, that's super helpful to know gareth and, if there ever is any feedback like that that any of you in the car or watching this video have please feel free to head over to the adaptive cards repo and and provide that to us. um It's super useful. It helps us prioritize the efforts that that we're enabling and if it's not directly related to our team, but it's related to adaptive cards. Somehow, for example, loop components, utilizing adaptive cards, we can always relay that message over to the appropriate team and provide that feedback to them.

A

Can you provide the links to build with regards to adaptive cards presentations? That is a great question brad. I do not have the links handy on me right now, but I can see if I, if I can find them real, quick and brad. I'm not sure if you have a twitter, but since I'm not sure I'll be able to get the the proper link during this call, I've gone ahead and linked my my twitter.

A

You can go ahead and shoot me a message, or I can also post the link to the the content once I I do find the link on that. So, if we aren't able to get the link to you by by the end of this call, uh you can find it with with that twitter.

B

uh I had one of the potential request. You know you have guest speakers that come on to these calls. Yes, a world in which you could get the power virtual agent. um I know they've done an update. Thomas did a youtube video on um about them supporting adaptive cards. Would there be a world in which you could get somebody from that team to do a little demo to us.

A

Absolutely that's: that's great feedback. Gareth I've gone ahead and taken the note here and I can follow up with that team. It's super useful. If we hear requests like specific requests for for guest speakers that are joining the call the usual way we obtain it is either by reaching out to the community, or I find some cool content on twitter that I'd love to highlight on the communitycon reach out to to whoever created that content or either or reach out to internal teams and see if they have any cool updates to share during the community.

A

Call. If there's a specific team like the power virtual agents team that you mentioned, that you would like to see in the community call, I can always reach out to them and see if they're interested in joining us for the community call which they usually are. It's great exposure for their product um great way to gather feedback, and I think it's really useful for us to highlight their awesome work with the community.

C

Okay, gp1 question. From my end, I put it on chat as well, but not sure if you see this, if you look at the adaptive cards, obviously and viva connections is supporting 1.3 and you are talking about 1.6 preview, why it's so slow to adopt the latest versions of adaptive cards into viva connections? Do you know maybe.

A

Yeah, that's a great question and it's it's something that we've struggled with: multiple teams, not just viva connections, um outlook teams, viva connections, we've we've synced up with them in the past and asked them if there is any way, we've even collaborated with them in the past to sort of expedite this process and help them adopt the the most recent versions of adaptive cards into their product. I just think it.

A

It comes down to conflicting engineering timelines, so they're working on providing the latest features to viva connections, which might not necessarily be tied in with adaptive cards and the resources they have to upgrade into the the latest version of adaptive cards might not get prioritized at the same time. um It's feedback that we often receive.

A

So I'm very thankful that you provided that to us, and I can I can relay that information back to their team, but usually it does take a couple of months for the the products that use adaptive cards to catch up to the latest schema version that we release.

C

So does they have any name in microsoft that we should motivate just to move things forward? Will help you a little bit.

A

Yeah, I'm not sure if there's any way or I I don't- have the the channel for providing feedback to the viva connections team. But this feedback in in the call right now is enough for me to be able to reach out to them and provide them with with that feedback.

A

Is there a specific feature that you're looking for in viva connections that isn't supported? Currently, that might be supported in a future version or a future scheme of adaptive cards? I think you said they're using 1.3 right now.

C

Yeah this this is what is mentioned on the adaptive cards website there that you shared, so if you like to so it's like three generations, so our developers are fixing problems. That does not exist anymore yeah or they are not able to do things. I will check details, but I really want to have the latest version, uh because uh the adaptive cars is a big deal as, like, I think, within this community. Everybody knows why, but, uh but obviously, three generations behind it's it's slightly too much.

C

It seems at least from my perspective, and I can get you details, but also when we'll be talking with product team of viva connections. Maybe we can guide them to you. Maybe this will help a bit.

A

Yeah, absolutely, and um if you, if you have like, if you're interested in more direct feedback or anything, I I always open up the the messages you can always reach out to me on twitter and I can even set something up with the appropriate team if you would like to to provide the feedback. um Thank you. Thank you so much for providing that, and we do understand that. It's it's a frustrating experience.

A

What you mentioned of fixing the problems that might not be existing with or might not be existent with future versions of adaptive cards is, is very frustrating and- and we hear you on that one, so let's try to work together to to get this prioritized on on on their team. Thank you much appreciated.

A

I have a future demo request. Can we see a demo of the new adaptive cards feature for new power- virtual agents? um Yes, we absolutely can now we'll reach out to that team and try to get a demo scheduled, if not for next month for the month following so that that'll be september, because I do know that, for the month of august, we've already got commitment from big think code who will be presenting the react native renderer to us getting different dev teams to entirely coordinate their release. Schedule seems to be an unattainable utopia.

A

I completely agree, I think, that's that's the most challenging part. Is these teams work on a different schedule, then than rt man when we provide a release, it might be mid-release schedule for them and they might not have resources to allocate to upgrading adaptive cards at that time. Adaptive cards is is huge and the people here in this community are aware of that.

A

uh It's used in teams to use outlook, viva connections, microsoft, search power, virtual agents, power automate, it's it's used in a lot of places and every team has their own debt resources and their business goals that they're trying to to achieve and just coordinating the release schedules for all those teams is is very challenging. But it's not something that should be impossible and the community feedback that we receive is very important for us to get that prioritized and get some eyes on that.

A

We'll do one final call for any questions that you might have if you can't think of a question right now, but one comes to mind later feel free to message me on twitter and I I can get back to you as soon as possible awesome. So thank you.

A

Everyone for attending the july adaptive cards community call as always here you can find short links to all the resources related to adaptive cards, whether it's our roadmap, um how to use that, of course templating our repo, which is where we have most of everything, that's related to adaptive cards. We have bug reports, issues, feature requests everything like that.

A

You can find it in in our adaptive card repo and for general help with building adaptive cards and sample cards, and even you can also find the recordings for for the previous community calls and made with cards dot io.

A

Here you can find the developer community costs, as well as their cadence for all the different m365 partners and yeah. With that we can end the july adaptive cards. Community call. Thank you everyone for attending. I hope you have a nice rest of your day evening and I hope to see you in the august community call.