We’re kicking off the new year with exciting updates to the Teams Toolkit for Visual Studio Code! In this release, we’ve focused on improving the user experience, enhancing developer capabilities, and fixing known issues.

New features

Refreshed user interface for getting started experience

We’ve redesigned the getting started experience to make it more intuitive and user-friendly, incorporating feedback from the developer community. Key updates include:

• A streamlined navigation layout in the left panel, making it easier to access key functionalities.
• An updated “Create New App” dialog, featuring well-organized categories for quicker and easier app creation.
• Redesigned walkthrough guides for Teams bots and declarative agents, ensuring a smooth onboarding experience for new developers.

Environment variable support for localization files

Developers can now integrate environment variables into their localized JSON files using the {{your_env_var}} syntax. During local debugging, provisioning, and publishing, Teams Toolkit resolves these variables dynamically. This ensures your application is well-equipped to adapt to different deployment environments.

Integrated debugging for declarative agents

Debugging declarative agents is now more seamless than ever with integrated debugging support in Visual Studio Code. This enhancement allows developers to:

• Visualize responses and stack traces directly within the IDE.
• Troubleshoot efficiently without needing to leave the development environment.

Regenerate actions for declarative agents

Keep your declarative agents up-to-date effortlessly! With the integration of Microsoft Kiota, Teams Toolkit now enables developers to regenerate actions, ensuring alignment with the latest features and capabilities.

Enhancements

• Improved script Action Output with Native TTY Terminal UX: We’ve enhanced the script action output by transitioning to the native TTY terminal user experience, addressing previous rendering issues in the Visual Studio Code output channel.
• Enhanced teams-js SDK with Treeshaking Support: Teams Toolkit now includes an updated teams-js SDK, enabling treeshaking to optimize bundled packages. Unused TeamsJS functions are removed, boosting app performance and reducing bundle size.
• Improved Authentication Actions for Declarative Agents:
  • Expanded authentication options for action generation, including support for API keys in headers or queries, as well as bearer tokens.
  • Enhanced support for registering OAuth configurations, with updated identity URIs in the format api://auth-{authGUID}.
• Updated Validation Rules for Action Generation: To provide more flexibility, the following rules were updated:
  • Removed nested object validation.
  • Removed JSON schema validation for non-JSON post bodies.
  • Relaxed circular reference validation.
  • Allowed HTTP server URLs in OpenAPI description files.
  • Enabled scaffolding of declarative agent projects with unsupported authentication.
  • Allowed APIs with multiple authentication methods.

Bug fixes

• Resolved an issue where bots would occasionally fail to respond during local debugging. #12777
• Fixed a bug where sample app details were not displayed when opening Teams Toolkit in GitHub Codespaces. #12715

Wrap-up

The January 2025 update continues our commitment to enhancing the developer experience and empowering you to build innovative solutions for Microsoft Teams. We’re excited to see how you use these new features and improvements to create impactful apps. As always, we welcome your feedback—let us know how we can further improve Teams Toolkit.

Happy coding! 🎉

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