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I am new to the Azure Bot Framework and I am trying to do something that I think is quite simple.

I have a Node application that a few times a day needs to send notifications to various skype groups. I have been using skype-http for a while, but it is unreliable and not officially supported by Microsoft. So, I am looking to rebuild the notification system using azure services.

It seems like I should be creating an Azure Bot Function, but the Bot Functions use the V3 API, which is deprecated.

It looks like Web App Bots are now the recommended option to create bots, but they seem to be solving a slightly different problem. But going this route, it looks like I still need to set up an Azure Function as well as storage. So, it seems vastly more complex than my current implementation.

My question is: Should I be using a Bot Function, a Web App Bot, or something else entirely to send notifications to multiple chat groups?

EDIT: To be clear, I am looking for an officially supported solution. skype-http regularly breaks for us due to API changes, and the other node-based skype libraries are similarly brittle.

Or, please let me know if there is no Microsoft-supported solution, then at least I know I will be stuck using private APIs.

Andrew Eisenberg
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You should look at Azure Functions as your platform, instead. Azure Functions would allow you to make the API calls you need. Additionally, you can set it to run via a trigger (timer or http request).

Instead of skype-http, check out sky-web-plus (https://www.npmjs.com/package/sky-web-plus). It's basically a port of several other packages already out there, but is getting regular love from its developer (so, hopefully stable and up-to-date) and appears to do what you need. As the developer is active, you can reach out to him/her with any specific questions.

Azure Bot Framework would not be a good fit for this purpose, alone.

Hope of help!

Steven Kanberg
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  • Thanks for your answer. It looks like there is no official Microsoft-supported way of doing what we want to. We looked at skyweb as well, but it is using internal skype REST calls, just like skype-http. My concern is that at any moment, Microsoft can change its internal APIs and all of our apps that rely on them will be broken. I'll wait a bit longer to hear from any of the Azure people directly, but otherwise I think your answer is correct. – Andrew Eisenberg Feb 14 '19 at 23:43