Notification bug: Chat with app via notification possible even when it shouldn't

[benjaminyasoon]

Hi there,

we are having an app within Microsoft Teams that sends notifications to users under certain conditions. The notification allows to respond (as indicated in screenshot). However, the app in general does not allow to respond to it (see second screenshot).

We internally discussed the behavior and suspect this to be a bug in the behavior of the notifications.

Happy to hear back from you!

[Nivedipa-MSFT]

@benjaminyasoon - Thanks for bringing this issue to our attention.
This is an app issue, not a platform bug.

The behavior you're seeing is due to a configuration inconsistency in the app itself. The notification includes a text input field that suggests users can type and respond directly, but when they try to do so, the bot rejects the message with "You cannot send messages to this bot." This happens because the app's notification UI promises functionality that the bot isn't configured to handle.

Most likely, the bot either doesn't have the personal scope enabled in its manifest, or it lacks the necessary message handlers to process incoming messages in personal chat contexts. The bot appears to be set up only for sending one-way notifications without supporting two-way conversations.

To fix this, the developer has two options.

Option 1 (if replies aren't needed): Remove the text input from notification adaptive cards to make them view-only.

Option 2 (if replies are required):

• Add personal scope to the bot manifest
• Implement message handlers for personal chat
• Allow the bot to receive and process user messages

Currently, the UI suggests users can interact, but the bot does not support it. The app should ensure the notification UI matches the bot’s capabilities to provide a consistent user experience.

Please let us know if you have any further query here.

[LeonYasoon]

Hey @Nivedipa-MSFT
I'm a colleague of @benjaminyasoon

We are interested in Option 1. We do not need or want the user receiving notifications replying, since the bot is read-only by design.
Can you confirm that customizing the notification a user sees when they receive a message from the bot (in this example the text "Request SUP-1223 was created by Service User") is now possible?
We haven't altered the default behaviour of notification cards in any way, so being able to reply to a read-only bot via the text input on a default notification card still seems like a bug to us.

[LeonYasoon]

Quick followup. You can also forward messages to read-only bot conversations..

[Nivedipa-MSFT]

@LeonYasoon - Yes, you can customize notifications to be read-only by following these steps:

• Set isNotificationOnly: true in the manifest.
• Exclude input or action elements from the Adaptive Card.
• Use inputHint: "ignoringInput" in the activity.

This is not a bug—Teams bots are conversational by default, so you need to enable notification-only mode explicitly. Once you set isNotificationOnly: true, the reply input will no longer appear.

Please let us know if you have any further query here.

[LeonYasoon]

@Nivedipa-MSFT Thanks for clarifying. We are already setting "isNotificationOnly: true" in the manifest and it has no effect.
And i would like to clarify: The notification card in question is not sent by us, this is default "You received a message" notification issued by Teams.

[benjaminyasoon]

@Nivedipa-MSFT Could you please answer back to Leon?