Line breaks for bot messages from output

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Posted on by DS2

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Hello,

In our chatbot we have a Power Automate Flow that passes a number of variables into a string value for the output. These are announcements that have a subject and a description field, that we pass through compose to the output for the message for the bot to display. There can be more than one announcement. We would like to format it so there are spaces between the announcements. This is currently what we get:
Bot Announcements.jpg
We have tried:
1) Creating spaces in the variables themselves, which had no effect - it seems these are stripped out when the output is sent to the bot.
2) Markdown (seems to have worked sometime in 2020 according to forum posts, but now only seems to work for images and videos)
3) HTML tags (break) - seems to have worked sometime in 2020 according to forum posts but no longer does

4) encoding URIs (you can see them showing in the picture above) - as per this post: https://powerusers.microsoft.com/t5/General/Power-Virtual-Agents-Rendering-line-breaks-on-bot-messages/td-p/590488

Is there any way to do this successfully in 2021? Thanks!

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CU22081450-0 Most Valuable Professional on at

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Hi @DS2 ,

Use markdown to do it, it'll work perfectly in this situation.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-automate/approvals-markdown-support

Look at the limitations if you are using on Teams or something like that, but Markdown lists will work perfectly for you.

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DS2 293 on at

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Thank you, @renatoromao - it is better, but still can't get a line break into the output (maybe I'm doing something wrong?). As we use teams we are limited to Numbered Lists, Nested Numbered Lists or Forced Line Breaks. Using the example 2 in the Markdown doc does not result in a line break:
This is line 1.(space, space) Line 2 has extra space before it.
Here is our chatbot output now:
And here is what we've done in Power Automate:
Note that I've tried all manner of spaces, which did not work and also tried the numbered lists, but it would not do consecutive numbers. E.g. each announcement had a "1" before it, rather than 1, 2, 3 etc.
So markdown for us is kind of working, but not fully for sure. What's your experience with using markdown in PVA, has it worked properly for you? Thanks again!

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CU22081450-0 Most Valuable Professional on at

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Hi @DS2 ,

I tested on my side and that is not working, a bad experience, unfortunately.

Recommend you to use Nested lists: Use markdown to format Power Automate approvals - Power Automate | Microsoft Docs

Basically you will do:

1. Subject

- Description

2. Subject

- Descrption 2

- Another field 3

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DS2 293 on at

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Thank you @renatoromao - I'm still seeing the weird behaviour where the numbered nested list does not show consecutive numbers. And, still can't get a blank space between announcements:

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