Office 365 Email

You can configure your bot to communicate with users via Microsoft Office 365 email. By configuring your bot to access an email account, it receives a message when a new email arrives. This enables the bot to use email as a channel for responding to user inquiries. In response to a user's email message, the bot could send an email reply.

The Email channel currently works with Office 365 only, other email services aren't currently supported.

Note:  The Office 365 email channel is available in DRUID version 7.0 and higher and only in the cloud and hybrid DRUID deployments. You cannot activate the channel in DRUID on premise deployments.
Important!  Before you enable the Email channel for your bot, it's important to note that rich content flow steps (like hero cards, choice, etc.) are not supported. The Email channel only supports message steps.

Prerequisites

  • You built and published a DRUID chat bot.

  • A dedicated Office 365 email account for the bot that uses the Modern authentication (OAuth) as authentication type. Reach out to your company's email administrator to get the Office 365 email account of the bot. You need it to configure the Email channel in the DRUID Platform.

  • In the browser, log in any Microsoft 365 product with the Office 365 email account of the bot.

Configuring the Office 365 Email channel

To configure the Office 365 Email channel in the DRUID Platform, follow these steps:

  1. In the DRUID Portal, select the bot, go to the bot details page and click on the Channels tab.
  2. Click on the Email section header. The section expands.

  3. In the Email address field, enter the dedicated Office 365 email account for the bot and click Authorize.
    4. Important!  Do not enter your own personal email account, as every message sent to that email account will be forwarded to the bot. This can result in the bot inappropriately sending a response to a sender. For this reason, bots should only use dedicated M365 email accounts.
  4. The 'Sign in to your account' pop-up opens.
    5. Note:  If the prompt does not open, check that the browser is not preventing the opening of pop-ups. Always allow pop-ups and redirects from the DRUID Platform.
  5. Sign in with the dedicated Office 365 email account for the bot.

  6. On successful login, a page opens with a validation code. Copy the validation code.

  7. In the DRUID Portal, in the Code field, enter the validation code you just copied to finish authorizing the bot email address.
  8. Click the Publish button. The channel activation might take up to 1 minute.

After the channel’s activation, the following fields are available in DRUID:

  • [[ChatUser]].ChannelId = "email"
  • [[ChatUser]].UserId - Stores the email address of the sender.

Inactivating the Office 365 Email channel

To inactivate the channel, follow these steps:

  1. Click Authorize and sign in with the dedicated Office 365 email account for the bot.
  2. After a successful login, a page will display a validation code. Copy the validation code.

  3. In the DRUID Portal, paste the copied validation code into the Code field to complete the authorization of the bot's email address.
  4. Click Delete Channel to inactivate the channel.