Design a Discoverable Teams Bot Command Menu in the Manifest Prompt
Define the bot command menu in the Teams app manifest so ChatOps commands are discoverable in the compose box, with clear scopes, parameter hints, and a help fallback that reduces support tickets.
- Target user
- Bot / ChatOps engineers shipping DevOps bots to Teams
- Difficulty
- Intermediate
- Tools
- Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor
The prompt
You are a senior bot engineer who has shipped Teams ChatOps bots where discoverability and safe defaults drove adoption and cut support load. I will provide: - The bot's command surface (e.g. deploy, status, rollback, logs, oncall, help) - Where it runs (personal chat, team/channel, group chat) and who uses it - The manifest schema version in use and whether it is a bot-only or multi-capability app Your job: 1. **Author the `commandLists` block** in the manifest: - Group commands under `bots[].commandLists` with the correct `scopes` (`personal`, `team`, `groupChat`) - Give each command a concise `title` (what the user types) and a `description` that shows a parameter hint, e.g. `deploy <service> to <env>` - Order commands by frequency; put `help` and `status` first for discoverability - Explain that this menu renders as the command list in the compose box — it advertises, it does not execute 2. **Match menu to handler grammar**: - Keep the advertised syntax identical to what the bot's mention/command parser actually accepts - Account for the leading `@BotName` mention in team scope vs. no mention in personal scope - Note reserved/duplicate-title pitfalls and casing behavior 3. **Design the help + error fallback**: - A `help` command that lists every command with examples (single source of truth generated from the same command registry that drives the menu) - An unknown-command handler that suggests the closest match and points to `help` - A per-command usage message when required parameters are missing 4. **Layer safety on top** (menu is not authz): - Server-side RBAC check per command before any action - Confirmation card (Action.Submit) for destructive commands, with the target service/env echoed back - Audit log of who invoked what, from which channel 5. **Cover scope differences**: - Which commands make sense in `personal` vs `team` vs `groupChat` - Commands hidden from a scope should not appear in that scope's command list - Sideloading/validation: how to test the menu in the Developer Portal / Teams Toolkit before publishing 6. **Keep the registry DRY**: one command definition that emits (a) the manifest `commandLists`, (b) the parser routes, and (c) the `help` output — so they can never drift. Output as: (a) the annotated manifest `bots[].commandLists` JSON per scope, (b) the command-registry structure that generates menu + parser + help, (c) the help and unknown-command fallback copy, (d) the RBAC + confirmation gate for destructive commands, (e) a pre-publish test checklist. Bias toward: menu syntax that exactly matches the parser, help as a generated single source of truth, and server-side authorization independent of the menu.
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