Bot message formatting in Facebook Messenger

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Posted on 16 Nov 2024 17:19:52 by Flix

Hi there

I have just published my custom Copilot Studio chatbot to Facebook Messenger as described in the official documentation (https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-copilot-studio/publication-add-bot-to-facebook).

It was all easy and the integration was set up... but unfortunately I see the following two issues when using Facebook Messenger to chat with mit Copilot Studio but:

Facebook Messenger seems to not be able to understand the formatting of bullet points and bold text etc. with the "*" symbols which is used by my bot. Please see red circles in image below.
After the bot has replied to my answer, the activity symbol (see "..." in image below) pops up again. This indicates that the bot is typing additional content after it has already provided the answer to my question. But the bot (correctly) does not send additional content... but this activity symbol just stays there and makes me as the user nervous because it indicates that more is to come from the bot.

This is only an issue in the Facebook Messenger app on my Android phone but everything looks good in the messenging area within the Facebook website.

Does anybody have an idea how to solve these two issues?

Thanks!

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Artur Stepniak 1,526 Super User 2025 Season 1 on 28 Nov 2024 at 09:24:50

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Bot message formatting in Facebook Messenger

Hello,

have you tried to do it on the instruction level? I mean something like: "if you're sending a message to Facebook Messenger, use plain text only, without any markdown" or "drop any markdown from the text if you're sending a message to Facebook Messenger". If it won't work I guess the only option is to integrate manually via API, but it's a time-consuming task and methinks that you don't want to do it. ;-)

Best rega
Flix 32 on 28 Nov 2024 at 09:03:20

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Bot message formatting in Facebook Messenger

Thx again, Artur.

Unfortunately, just instructing the model to avoid using markdown won't work because I have one agent serving multiple channels and some of the channels need markdown (e.g., web chat) and others not (e.g., Messenger). So, architectually, formatting of content should not be done at the agent level but instead in the channel-specific modules, because each channel might have different formatting requirements... and I don't want a separate agent for each channel ;-)

Do you have any idea how to parse agent messages on a per channel level? This would be very useful not only to remove markdown that a certain channel does not understand but also to remove citations if you don't want them in a certain channel.
Artur Stepniak 1,526 Super User 2025 Season 1 on 27 Nov 2024 at 12:57:34

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Bot message formatting in Facebook Messenger

No problem. :-) I think that should be quite simple. If you're using generative actions, then you can instruct the model to avoid using markdown - it'll output plain text only.

I guess the main difference is that on Facebook you can create a post by using a markdown editor - it needs to be customized, because otherwise it wouldn't be attractive. Messenger is mainly accessed via mobile phones, that's why they've implemented plain text only. It's also easier to manage and it's not really crucial when you're messaging with someone.

Best regards,

Artur
Flix 32 on 27 Nov 2024 at 12:49:29

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Bot message formatting in Facebook Messenger

Thanks for your input, Artur.

I agree that no. 1 "is easy" to see that markdown formatting is not supported by Facebook Messenger. My questions would be how I can get the markdown out of the Copilot Studio messages that are fed into Facebook Messenger but keep the markdown e.g. for the web chat channel.

My thoughts on this: I would have expected that such channel formatting specifics are part of the channel modules that can be selected in Copilot Studio. So my question would be why this is not considered in the Facebook module... but I guesss I can answer my question myself: The Copilot Studio module is called "Facebook" and not "Facebook Messenger" hence the formatting works with "Facebook" but not with "Facebook Messenger". Do you agree? I am just a little bit surprised that Facebook uses different formatting rules on their two channels which makes life complicated for their ecosystem including Copilot Studio.
Artur Stepniak 1,526 Super User 2025 Season 1 on 27 Nov 2024 at 12:23:07

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Bot message formatting in Facebook Messenger

Hello,

1. is easy - Messenger doesn't use markdown for text formatting. It's just a plain text, so you cannot make it bold.

2. is more challenging. It seems that the call to Facebook API properly handles the message, but it's not sending an end event or something which indicates that the message was written. What you could experiment with is page subscriptions - try to add more. Overall I'd suggest to raise a request to support to review this.

Best regards,

Artur Stepniak

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