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Proactive Messaging

In Sending Messages, you were shown how to respond to an event when it happens. However, there are times when you want to send a message to the user without them sending a message first. This is called proactive messaging. You can do this by using the send method in the app instance. This approach is useful for sending notifications or reminders to the user.

The main thing to note is that you need to have the conversationId of the chat or channel that you want to send the message to. It's a good idea to store this value somewhere from an activity handler so that you can use it for proactive messaging later.

// Installation is just one place to get the conversation id. All activities
// have the conversation id, so you can use any activity to get it.
[Install]
public async Task OnInstall([Context] InstallUpdateActivity activity, [Context] IContext.Client client, [Context] IStorage<string, object> storage)
{
    // Save the conversation id in 
    storage.Set(activity.From.AadObjectId!, activity.Conversation.Id);
    await client.Send("Hi! I am going to remind you to say something to me soon!");
    notificationQueue.AddReminder(activity.From.AadObjectId!, Notifications.SendProactive, 10_000);
}

Then, when you want to send a proactive message, you can retrieve the conversationId from storage and use it to send the message.

public static class Notifications
{
    public static async Task SendProactive(string userId)
    {
        var conversationId = (string?)storage.Get(userId);

        if (conversationId is null) return;

        await app.Send(conversationId, "Hey! It's been a while. How are you?");
    }
}
tip

In this example, you see how to get the conversation id using one of the activity handlers. This is a good place to store the conversation id, but you can also do this in other places like when the user installs the app or when they sign in. The important thing is that you have the conversation id stored somewhere so you can use it later.