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@cleemullins cleemullins released this 10 Nov 00:16
· 1 commit to 4.11 since this release
4.11.0
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November 2020 (version 4.11.0)

Welcome to the November 2020 release of the Bot Framework SDK. We continue to focus on code quality, improving developer experience, customer requests, overall SDK improvements and partner support. We are previewing a new Cloud Adapter and other exciting things, including:

  • Teams Introduction of Teams Meeting Participant API along with new features and fixes.
  • Skills We continue our 'skills everywhere!' mission by reducing development friction, enabling interruptions, and additional features.
  • Composer Continued improvements in deployment, Skills integration, features flags, and more!
  • Orchestrator (preview) Improved samples, models, and Bot Framework Composer support
  • Bot Framework Documentation We've added Adaptive Dialog support, updated docs around Adaptive Expressions, and custom .lg functions.
  • CLI Improvements to merging and importing of dialogs and assets
  • Virtual Assistant Improved core runtime, advancements in skills features
  • Power Virtual Agents Thanks to the Bot Framework SDK, it is easier and easier to build a PVA Bot!
  • HealthBot Health Bot, built using the Bot Framework, continues to advance in support of multiple Health related initiatives!

Insiders: Want to try new features as soon as possible? You can download the nightly Insiders build [C#] [JS] [Python] [CLI] and try the latest updates as soon as they are available. And for the latest Bot Framework news, updates, and content, follow us on Twitter @msbotframework!

Microsoft Teams

Continued improvements enabling features for creating bots and apps in Teams.

  • Get Participant Meeting API
  • CacheInfo support on Invoke responses
  • OAuthInput fix
  • Meeting specific notification support
  • Add on_teams_team_renamed (python only)

Skills

To reduce development friction, you can now run and test skills locally with the Emulator without needing an AppId and password.

Quality for skills is critical, and we're making large invements in automated testing. That work is (mostly) still in the design phase, and feedback is very welcome:

We're also continuing to bring features to skills to enable additional scenarios:

  • Interruptions are enabled in BeginSkill.
  • Update and Delete activities from a skill.

Overall SDK Improvements

Code quality and testing infrastructure have continued to be a focus for the this SDK release.

  • The default branch on all repositories has been renamed to 'main'.
  • We have improved typing and transcript logger middleware behavior and error handling.
  • Dotnet SDK tests have been ported to xunit.
  • Configurable Adaptive Dialog cycle detection.
  • Form Dialog preview

Documentation

Updates and improvements to existing documentation have continued.

  • Updated and expanded documentation for adaptive dialogs.
  • Updated and reorganized the security and authentication topics.
  • Updated information about: .lg custom functions, adaptive expressions, and memory scopes.
  • Added Java (preview) reference documentation: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/java/api/?term=microsoft.bot.builder
  • Added information on how to use the Bot Framework CLI commands in support of various adaptive dialog features.
  • Updated skills documentation.
  • The claims validator is now required for bot a skill and skill consumer.
  • Updated information about Direct Line extensions.
  • Updated how to connect to some of the channels: Slack, Webex.
  • Archived the SDK v3 content, available at: https://docs.microsoft.com/previous-versions/azure/bot-service/index-bf-sdk
  • Updated information about the dialogs library and the overall architecture of a bot.

Cloud Adapter (not yet feature complete, dotnet only)

The Cloud Adapter introduces an enriched configuration model and enables hosting a bot in any cloud environment.

  • Supports the Bot Framework protocol and auth model.
  • All the constants defining the auth model are configurable.
  • Note: 4.11.0 does not have full feature parity with BotFrameworkAdapter
    • Streaming support, OAuthPrompt support and full Skill support are coming soon.
    • Preview: The recommendation is to continue using BotFrameworkAapter in the 4.11.0 release unless the environment requires configurable auth constants.

Orchestrator Preview

Orchestrator is a Language Understanding arbitration (“dispatch”) technology to route incoming user utterances to an appropriate skill or to subsequent language processing service such as LUIS or QnA Maker.

  • It is a transformer based solution that is optimized for conversational AI applications.
  • It is built to run locally in your bot.
  • It is written in C++ and is available as a library in C#, Node.js and soon Python and Java.
  • The current release is designed to be used only for intent detection. Entity recognition is on the roadmap.
  • Orchestrator can be used in code-first solutions or directly in Composer.
    This is a preview release with improved documentation and language models.

CLI

  • The CLI will now download an merge dialog assets.
  • Ordering of names while merging.
  • Expose import resolver interface for cross-train/luis:build/qnamaker:build
  • Region support in lg translate

Virtual Assistant

  • Skills improvements
  • Core runtime design updates

Composer

HealthBot

The Health Bot Service is a cloud platform for virtual health assistants and health bots, Health Bot uses Bot Framework under the hood. With the latest upgrade to the Bot Framework SDK V4 foundation, Health Bot can be called as a Bot Framework skill or call subsequent custom Bot Framework skills. See more here: Health Bot Overview.

Power Virtual Agents

Power Virtual Agents (PVA) is part of Microsoft Power Platform. In PVA, chatbots can be created with a guided, no-code graphical interface - and without the need for data scientists or developers. In the latest integration with Bot Framework SDK, PVA can be extended to create custom solutions.

  • Use Bot Framework Composer to create and connect to Bot Framework skills.
  • Publish directly from Bot Framework Composer to PVA portal into PVA Topics runtime (coming soon).

4.11.0 Change Logs

Change log for CLI 4.11.0

  • Replacing node-fetch with axios to get proxy detection [PR 1036]
  • Fix bug in interface sorting [PR 1034]
  • Fix problem with call to isDirectory [PR 1032]
  • Adjust cross-train to use id as key-value instead of path in config [PR 1030]
  • Remove unused dup hash in luis/qnamaker build when reconstructing files [PR 1026]
  • Update dialog:merge to support author and .ds_store [PR 1027]
  • Orchestrator CLI draft spec [PR 1021]
  • Clean cross-train config discovery code pieces [PR 1024]
  • Refactor error message of luis build and qnamaker build [PR 1025]
  • Fix exit code not thrown issue when cli running into exception [PR 1022]
  • Make prepack scripts more consistent [PR 1020]
  • Fix update section bug when there are errors [PR 1017]
  • Ensure all operations are under checkOnly. [PR 1018]
  • Delete uninstalled imports [PR 1015]
  • Refactor luis build interface to decouple dialog gen from build [PR 990]
  • Fix trailing tab after qna questions is not recognized issue [PR 1008]
  • Add component information to return [PR 1012]
  • Move to npm run test in vscode launch config [PR 1013]
  • Shared root tsconfig.json with overrides [PR 1003]
  • Decouple config validation from parseFile [PR 1002]
  • Cleanup dialog:verify and add intelligent import to dialog:merge [PR 1001]
  • Fix lg:expand cannot retrieve the value from scope with certain paths [PR 994]
  • Make LU parser behavior configurable [PR 992]
  • Add region support in lg translate [PR 995]
  • Add exception catch for relative endpoint [PR 984]
  • Clean docs of luis:build and qna build and cross-train [PR 982]
  • Switch master branch to main in readme [PR 977]
  • Add --imports switch and improve exported assets copying [PR 980]
  • Fixes to LU format for phraselist handling as well introduction of new parser flags for collision handling for labels [PR 979]
  • bf-lu: fix section operator issues and adjust file and url import interface [PR 965]
  • Bug fixes for nuget versions and import/export. [PR 971]
  • bf-lu: validate empty phrase list [PR 972]
  • Fix lowercase settings issue [PR 969]
  • Add version in luis recognizer and settings file and adjust deleteOldVersion interface [PR 962]
  • bf-lu: support new link reference format [PR 961]
  • Remove unused oclif dependency in bf-lu and related dup tests [PR 960]
  • Fixes #943 [PR 956]
  • Fix update issue in importing url and file api [PR 955]
  • Updating main readme on daily builds consumption [PR 948]
  • Expose import resolver interface for cross-train/luis:build/qnamaker:build [PR 935]
  • Sibling $ref required removed from definition. [PR 944]
  • Update README.md [PR 939]
  • Adding yaml for daily beta branch [PR 941]
  • Change dialog:merge bundling [PR 932]
  • Removing Dispatcher from master [PR 931]
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