PVA unified authoring canvas to display a dynamic adaptive card
In this second answer, I use the unified authoring canvas to provide an example on how to present a chatbot user with an adaptive card that contains dynamic content that is retrieved from an external data source. I use Dataverse in this example, but the approach should be similar for any other data source, as I retrieve data with a Power Automate cloud flow and pass the data back to Power Virtual Agents.
In Power Virtual Agents, using the unified authoring canvas:
- I create a new topic called "Store Locations", give it a few trigger phrases, and add a Question node to ask the user "What is your city"?
I use Power Virtual Agents' default "City" entity to automatically extract the city from a user utterance. - I save the response as the "UserCity" variable.
- I save my topic.
Before going to Power Automate (to retrieve my data) the first thing I need to do is create and design an adaptive card.
- There are many samples available here: https://adaptivecards.io/samples/
- You can then further customize samples in the adaptive card designer: https://adaptivecards.io/designer/.
- In my example, I create a card with a FactSet (to display the location names and address in a small table), and then add 2 ActionSet, the first one with Action.OpenUrl actions, to open a location's page in a new window, and the second one with a Action.Submit action, to submit an option as an answer from the user.
Note: Action.Submit will need adjustments depending on where you deploy your bot. For example if you deploy it to Microsoft Teams, you'll need to add extra information in the Data payload. You can refer to this documentation for more information: Adaptive Cards actions in Microsoft Teams.
I designed a sample card that looks like this:
The corresponding card JSON payload is:
{
"type": "AdaptiveCard",
"body": [
{
"type": "TextBlock",
"size": "Medium",
"weight": "Bolder",
"text": "️ Our Locations in X"
},
{
"type": "FactSet",
"facts": [
{
"title": "Option A",
"value": "Address 1"
},
{
"title": "Option B",
"value": "Address 2"
}
]
},
{
"type": "Container",
"items": [
{
"type": "TextBlock",
"text": " Open for more details",
"wrap": true,
"size": "Default",
"weight": "Bolder",
"color": "Accent",
"isSubtle": false
},
{
"type": "ActionSet",
"actions": [
{
"type": "Action.OpenUrl",
"title": " Option A",
"url": "https://www.bing.com/search?q=Option A"
},
{
"type": "Action.OpenUrl",
"title": " Option B",
"url": "https://www.bing.com/search?q=Option B"
}
],
"spacing": "None",
"separator": true
},
{
"type": "TextBlock",
"text": " Select store",
"wrap": true,
"size": "Default",
"weight": "Bolder",
"color": "Accent",
"isSubtle": false,
"horizontalAlignment": "Left",
"spacing": "Large"
}
],
"spacing": "Large"
},
{
"type": "ActionSet",
"actions": [
{
"type": "Action.Submit",
"title": " Option A",
"id": "A",
"data": "Option A"
},
{
"type": "Action.Submit",
"title": " Option B",
"id": "B",
"data": "Option B"
}
]
}
],
"$schema": "http://adaptivecards.io/schemas/adaptive-card.json",
"version": "1.3"
}
To make the adaptive card dynamic, I use Power Automate to provide the various JSON arrays my card needs in the expected format. Because I have 3 datasets that are slighthly different, I create 3 array variables in my cloud flow: "List Of Accounts" for the FactSet, "List Of Accounts Actions" for the first ActionSet, and "List Of Accounts Actions Submit" for the second Action Set.
From my topic in Power Virtual Agents:
- I add a "Call an action" node
- I select "Create a flow"
In Power Automate:
- I add "User City" as a text input for my flow.
- I add 3 "Initialize variable" actions
- 1 integer variable "Number Of Accounts" (I'll use it to count the number of results)
- 3 array variables: "List Of Accounts", "List Of Accounts Actions", and "List Of Accounts Actions Submit"
- I use the "List Rows" from the Dataverse connector to retrieve a list of Accounts with a few OData expressions to optimize my query:
- A select expressionto only retrive the Account Name, Address 1: Street 1 and Account ID (name,address1_line1,accountid)
- A filter expression, to only retrieve active accounts that are located in the city the user provided (address1_city eq '@{triggerBody()['text']}' and statecode eq 0)
- An order expression, so that results are sorted alphabetically (name asc)
Now I need to use the data returned from my query to build the various variables I want to pass back to Power Virtual Agents and to my adaptive cards in Bot Framework Composer:
- I add an "Apply to each" action, and select the "value" output from my "List Rows" action. That way, for each returned record, the actions I add within the "Apply to each" box will be applied.
- First, an "Increment variable" action for the "Number Of Accounts" variable, with a value set to 1.
- Then 3 "Append to array variables" for my various arrays I initialized.
- What is crucial here is to respect the JSON format that the adaptive card expects for the FactSet and the 2 ActionSet.
- Finally, in the "Return value(s) to Power Virual Agents" step, I add 4 outputs:
- "Number Of Accounts"
- "List Of Accounts",
- "List Of Accounts Actions",
- "List Of Accounts Actions Submit"
- For array variables, I need to transform them to text format (as they were initialized as arrays). To that end, for each of them, I go the "Expression" tab, select "string" and go back to the "Dynamic Content" tab to select the variable name, and click OK.
- I then save my cloud flow.
Back in Power Virtual Agents:
- I can see my Power Automate flows has the new 4 outputs.
- I map these with new corresponding variables.
- I use the "NumberOfAccounts" variable in a Condition node so that I can have different user experienced if the city returns 0 results.
Under "All other conditions", I add:
- A "Send a message" node with a text saying "OK, I have found {x] NumberOfAccounts location(s) in {x}bot.UserCity." using variables.
- An "Ask a question" node, where I add "Adaptive card".
- I save the response as the UserSelectedAccount variable.
- Under JSON, I paste the content of my adaptive card JSON payload.
- I expand the card content,
- I then convert the JSON to a Power Fx Formula record,
- For each of the dynamic arrays in my adaptive card, I reference the retrieved Power Automate JSON data using Topic.VariableName within as a Power Fx record, using the ForAll, Table, and ParseJSON formulas.
{
type: "AdaptiveCard",
body: [
{
type: "TextBlock",
size: "Medium",
weight: "Bolder",
text: "🗺️ Our Locations in " & Topic.UserCity
},
{
type: "FactSet",
facts: ForAll(
Table(ParseJSON(Topic.ListOfAccounts)),
{
title: Text(ThisRecord.Value.title),
value: Text(ThisRecord.Value.value)
}
)
},
{
type: "Container",
items: [
{
type: "TextBlock",
text: "🔎 Open for more details",
wrap: true,
size: "Default",
weight: "Bolder",
color: "Accent",
isSubtle: false
},
{
type: "ActionSet",
actions: ForAll(
Table(ParseJSON(Topic.ListOfAccountsActions)),
{
type: Text(ThisRecord.Value.type),
title: Text(ThisRecord.Value.title),
url: Text(ThisRecord.Value.url)
}
),
spacing: "None",
separator: true
},
{
type: "TextBlock",
text: "👆 Select store",
wrap: true,
size: "Default",
weight: "Bolder",
color: "Accent",
isSubtle: false,
horizontalAlignment: "Left",
spacing: "Large"
}
],
spacing: "Large"
},
{
type: "ActionSet",
actions: ForAll(
Table(ParseJSON(Topic.ListOfAccountsActionsSubmit)),
{
type: Text(ThisRecord.Value.type),
title: Text(ThisRecord.Value.title),
id: Text(ThisRecord.Value.id),
data: Text(ThisRecord.Value.data)
}
)
}
],
'$schema': "http://adaptivecards.io/schemas/adaptive-card.json",
version: "1.3"
}
I then can:
- Add a message saying "You selected {x} UserSelectedAccount. Great choice!" using the new variable.
- Save my topic.
And that's it.
The adaptive card with dynamic content is presented to the user:
