Sideloading VS Custom Bot in Microsoft Teams

Question

Im trying to make a custom bot in MS Teams.

My Admin has not yet enabled "Sideloading", but I have the option to "Create a Custom Bot", yet I cannot find any information between the differences of these 2 options?

Has the "Custom Bot" replaced sideloading? In which case, how can i connect my bot to my team? Its hosted on azure, but it kept saying "Sorry, there was a problem encountered with your request", when I had it set up using the Custom Bot.

The bot works perfectly, using both the emulator and the bot framework.

Answer 1

A custom bot is not a Bot Framework bot - it's really designed as a simple way to send information from Teams to an external application (Slack calls them "Outgoing Webhooks"). It's not designed for real bot conversations in the Bot Framework sense. The feature (and its limitations) are documented in detail here.

You can't use bots in a team without sideloading - that's what sideloading is for. When you sideload an app that contains a bot - more info here - it registers additional information needed for a bot to work in a team, as well as a record of the consent for that bot to operate in a team.