[Tracking] Add support for deleteActivity and updateActivity

[benbrown]

Adding support for these methods in WebChat will bring support for these methods to the emulator, which is important to allow developers to truly test their applications which may rely on these methods!

According to @compulim this would involve a few lines here:

https://github.com/Microsoft/BotFramework-WebChat/blob/master/packages/core/src/reducers/activities.js#L83

[dandriscoll]

Before adding support, let's please discuss the design -- we added messageUpdate and messageDelete for this but the behaviors can be tricky so we should make sure we're thinking about them the same way.

[corinagum]

@seaen tagging you for tracking purposes.

[corinagum]

@benbrown Could you let us know the priority level for this? :)

[benbrown]

It's not a high priority item -- it just presents an awkward problem for the SDK samples and demos because we can't show these APIs (which are present in the SDK) in use in the emulator.

[compulim]

@dandriscoll do you have any docs/specs pointing to messageUpdate/messageDelete activity type?

@benbrown do you have any end-to-end stories for this feature? It will help us to prioritize and give us insights on how messageUpdate/messageDelete should behave.

[benbrown]

The scenarios I have most commonly had are in multi-user environments, where the actions of one user cause updates or changes to messages displayed to another user (or in a public channel).

for example, a polling bot, where users vote by clicking a button. the message updates with results as each user clicks.

another example would be a "stand up" bot, where each user individually responds to a set of questions, and the main "report" being displayed to the group is updated with answers as they arrive.

for message deletes, there are many scenarios where a bot might clean up after itself or rescind a request by deleting a message. deleting messages is a good way to prevent users from clicking buttons on old cards, for example.

you might also have a help system, or onboarding tutorial where a series of cards (attachments with content + buttons) is shown using a sequence of messageUpdates, then when the task is completed, the entire message is deleted to leave the channel "clean."

[compulim]

@dandriscoll do you think we have enough information to have a meeting together to discuss the next step on the support of update/delete activity?

@cwhitten do you have any inputs on this?

[dandriscoll]

Yep, let's meet

[compulim]

We are currently having another high-level discussion around microsoft/BotFramework-WebChat#1086 (remove "Enable Preview"). How about after that one, we meet up on this one? Prefer to discuss one-by-one to reduce confusion.

[DaKevinH]

Do you have any news on this?

[compulim]

@DaKevinH No news.

@dandriscoll do you know who should involve in this work? And probably this issue should move to botframework-services for greater visibility.

[dandriscoll]

Can you set up a meeting to discuss?

[cwhitten]

I'll move this to botframework-services in the meantime. @compulim ack'ing Dan's request for a meeting to discuss. Thanks!

[compulim]

Meeting scheduled. Attached a list of pre-meeting questions, please feel free to add to below:

• Delete activity, requested by bot
  • What channels support delete activity today?
  • Any stories to support this scenario?
  • Will this remove the activity in the conversation history?
• Update activity, requested by bot
  • What channels support update activity today?
  • Any stories to support this scenario?
    • (Web Chat) After the user submit an Adaptive Card, it can be render as something else to prevent re-submission (https://github.com/microsoft/BotFramework-WebChat/issues/1427)
  • Will this update the activity in the conversation history?

[dandriscoll]

The meeting on this topic has concluded, and the most important outcome is that support for Update and Delete within the Direct Line service remains on the backlog with low priority and no ETA due to low customer demand. There are some followup items within Web Chat and the Emulator and we agreed to transfer this issue to track those.

[Mangopony]

Any news on this?

[tanetrail]

Any idea when we can get this feature. we are trying different approaches to handle the updates and forcing us to move to different solution. It would be great if we can get this feature

[jayadrathamondal]

Any news on this feature? We need this feature badly.

[BeeMaia]

We also need to update activities in transcript. Any news on it? Thanks

[Sujit-Gaikwad]

Any update on this feature???

[MichaelHaydenAtMicrosoft]

Hello, thank you for the feedback. I conferred with our team on this and unfortunately we do not have a short term ETA for this feature, it is a large work item and needs to be evaluated against other priorities. We’ve captured this in our planning backlog however and will evaluate it during upcoming planning milestones. Our apologies for any inconvenience here.

[Sujit-Gaikwad]

Hi @dmvtech, can you please keep this issue open for tracking. atleast will get to know by which quater this feature is expected to release after evaluating efforts on this. regards, sujit gaikwad

[david-minaya]

Any update on this feature?

[MichaelHaydenAtMicrosoft]

Reopening issue for tracking based on customer requests. Service team to track.

[arturl]

@compulim, looking at WebChat repo I don't see the support there. Can you confirm? We do support it in some channels that allow it, for example Telegram.

[arturl]

Not supported.

[jrpavoncello]

We also require this to support hiding hero cards or adaptive cards after they've been interacted with.

[JordyGit]

Please add support for updating activities in the bot emulator.

[lordscarlet]

For me, I need this functionality for removing an activity if it contains PII.

[jrpavoncello]

Definitely won't work for everybody, but we ended up sending our own custom event activity to tell our custom WebChat implementation to hide "deleted" activities.

[AidanStrong]

I would like this functionality to delete sensitive data after a short period of time.

[Godrules500]

Any update on this?

[Fulll3]

Any update? Would be very useful for LLM implementation. Updating it's streamed message response via webchat.