We’re excited to bring you the latest updates for the Teams Toolkit for Visual Studio Code! In this release, we’ve focused on enhancing the app development experience by adding new features, improving existing functionalities, and fixing known issues. Let’s dive into what’s new in August 2024.

Enhanced App Validation

Developers can now evaluate their app packages against the same test cases Microsoft uses to review apps. The new Enhanced App Validation feature in Teams Toolkit identifies errors or warnings in your app package and offers guidelines for resolution. This feature ensures your app meets the necessary standards before submission. For more details, refer to the Teams Store validation guidelines and Commercial marketplace certification policies.

Generate an Intelligent Chatbot with Python

During Build 2024, we introduced support for building Custom Engine Copilot, including a “chat with” feature for your own API. Now, we’re thrilled to extend this capability to Python developers. With Teams Toolkit, you can now generate intelligent chatbots using Python, expanding your toolkit for building powerful, AI-driven applications.

Create Declarative Copilots

You can now use Teams Toolkit to create declarative copilots, allowing you to craft custom copilots by declaring instructions, actions, and knowledge to tailor Copilot for Microsoft 365. These declarative copilots operate on the same orchestrator, foundation models, and trusted AI services that power Microsoft Copilot. Learn more about Declarative Copilot here. Teams Toolkit enables you to build either a basic declarative copilot or one with an API plugin.

Currently Declarative copilot is still in extended private preview, make sure you met these prerequisites before building a declarative copilot with Teams Toolkit.

Using Assistant API on Azure OpenAI Service

Teams Toolkit has updated the AI Agent (Python) app template to support the Assistant API on Azure OpenAI Service. Now, you can build your own AI Agents for Microsoft 365 using Python, with the option to choose between Azure OpenAI Service or directly using OpenAI. An update for the TypeScript and JavaScript versions will be coming soon.

Enhancements

• Teams Toolkit will continually update scaffold app templates to ensure they meet the latest Teams Store validation guidelines. The first wave of updates focuses on all bot templates. To understand what has been changed, you can check out the following pull requests:
  • PR#12063: Updated Basic Bot and Message Extension
  • PR#12096: Updated Chat Command
  • PR#12123: Updated Chat Notification Messages
  • PR#12119: Updated Sequential Workflow in Chat
• Teams Toolkit will now inform users to generate an API key before debugging the API Message Extension (ME) or API Plugin with API Key authentication templates.
• Secret values have been redacted from the Visual Studio Code output channel to enhance security.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed vulnerability issues in TeamsFx SDK. #11973
• Fixed an issue with groupchat and groupChat compatibility in Teams app manifest. #12028
• Resolved an issue where the link redirection for the lifecycle button Provision was incorrect. #12120
• Addressed an issue with publicClientApplication initialization failure in TeamsFx SDK. #12159
• Fixed an issue when creating SharePoint Framework-based tab apps. #12173

Download the latest version of Teams Toolkit and explore these new features and improvements today.

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