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Teams bot API changes to fetch team or chat members

  • Article

Note

  • The deprecation process for TeamsInfo.getMembers and TeamsInfo.GetMembersAsync APIs have started. Initially, they are heavily throttled to five requests per minute and return a maximum of 10K members per team. This results in the full roster not being returned as team size increases.
  • You must update to version 4.10 or higher of the Bot Framework SDK and switch to the paginated API endpoints, or the TeamsInfo.GetMemberAsync single user API. This also applies to your bot even if you are not directly using these APIs, as older SDKs call these APIs during membersAdded events. To view the list of upcoming changes, see API changes.

If you want to retrieve information for one or more members of a chat or team, you can use the Microsoft Teams bot APIs TeamsInfo.GetMembersAsync for C# or TeamsInfo.getMembers for TypeScript or Node.js APIs. For more information, see fetch roster or user profile.

These APIs have the following shortcomings:

  • For large teams, performance is poor and timeouts are more likely: The maximum team size has grown considerably since Teams was released. As GetMembersAsync or getMembers returns the entire member list, it takes a long time for the API call to return for large teams, and it's common for the call to time out and you have to try again.
  • Getting profile details for a single user is difficult: To get the profile information for a single user, you have to retrieve the entire member list, and then search for the one you want. There's a helper function in the Bot Framework SDK to make it simpler, but it isn't efficient.

With the introduction of organization wide teams, there's a requirement to better align these APIs with Microsoft 365 privacy controls. Bots used in large teams are able to retrieve basic profile information similar to the User.ReadBasic.All Microsoft Graph permission. Tenant administrators have a great deal of control over which apps and bots can be used in their tenant, but these settings are different from Microsoft Graph.

The following code provides a sample JSON representation of what is returned by Teams bot APIs:

[{
    "id": "29:1GcS4EyB_oSI8A88XmWBN7NJFyMqe3QGnJdgLfFGkJnVelzRGos0bPbpsfJjcbAD22bmKc4GMbrY2g4JDrrA8vM06X1-cHHle4zOE6U4ttcc",
    "name": "Anon1 (Guest)",
    "tenantId":"72f988bf-86f1-41af-91ab-2d7cd011db47",
 "userRole": "anonymous"
}, {
    "id": "29:1bSnHZ7Js2STWrgk6ScEErLk1Lp2zQuD5H2qQ960rtvstKp8tKLl-3r8b6DoW0QxZimuTxk_kupZ1DBMpvIQQUAZL-PNj0EORDvRZXy8kvWk",
    "objectId": "76b0b09f-d410-48fd-993e-84da521a597b",
    "givenName": "John",
    "surname": "Patterson",
    "email": "[email protected]",
    "userPrincipalName": "[email protected]",
    "tenantId":"72f988bf-86f1-41af-91ab-2d7cd011db47",
 "userRole": "user"
}, {
    "id": "29:1URzNQM1x1PNMr1D7L5_lFe6qF6gEfAbkdG8_BUxOW2mTKryQqEZtBTqDt10-MghkzjYDuUj4KG6nvg5lFAyjOLiGJ4jzhb99WrnI7XKriCs",
    "objectId": "6b7b3b2a-2c4b-4175-8582-41c9e685c1b5",
    "givenName": "Rick",
    "surname": "Stevens",
    "email": "[email protected]",
    "userPrincipalName": "[email protected]",
    "tenantId":"72f988bf-86f1-41af-91ab-2d7cd011db47",
 "userRole": "user"
}]

API changes

Following are the upcoming API changes:

Note

Upgrade to the latest version of the Microsoft Bot Framework SDK as follows:

  • Bot Framework SDK v3: Upgrade to version 3.30.2 or later.
  • Bot Framework SDK v4: Upgrade to version 4.8 or later.

  • A new API is created TeamsInfo.GetMemberAsync for retrieving the profile information for a single user. It takes the ID of the team or chat and a UPN that is userPrincipalName, Microsoft Entra Object ID objectId, or the Teams user ID id as parameters and returns the profile information for that user.

    Note

    objectId is changed to aadObjectId to match what is called in the Activity object of a Bot Framework message. The new API is available with version 4.8 or later of the Bot Framework SDK. It is also available in the Teams SDK extension Bot Framework 3.x. Meanwhile, you can use the REST endpoint.

  • TeamsInfo.GetMembersAsync in C# and TeamsInfo.getMembers in TypeScript or Node.js is formally deprecated. Once the new API is available, you must update your bots to use it. This also applies to the underlying REST API that these APIs use.

  • Bots can't proactively retrieve the userPrincipalName or email properties for members of a chat or team. Bots must use the Graph APIs to retrieve the required information. The new GetConversationPagedMembers API can't return the userPrincipalName and email properties.

    Note

    We recommend you to use the Graph API with an access token to retrieve information.

See also