How to send message later in bot framework?

Question

I want my bot to be able to send some replies later. Like in alarm clock, when user says, ping me at 5 AM then I want to send message to the user at 5 AM. How can I send message without receiving one?

Answer 1

You'll need to receive at least one message so that you know the recipient's address. You'll need to save the addressing info from the incoming message. I think the easiest way is to save the whole message.

Nodejs:

var reply = session.message; // address: reply.address
// ...
reply.text = 'Wake up!';
bot.send(reply);

C#:

var reply = activity.CreateReply(""); // reply.Recipient, reply.Conversation, etc.
// ...
reply.Text = "Wake up!";
ConnectorClient connector = new ConnectorClient(new Uri(reply.ServiceUrl));
await connector.Conversations.ReplyToActivityAsync(reply);

Answer 2

Without reply to an activity request, you can send a message to him like the following. I should mention that you must have the user's Id, and it means at least the user should have sent a message to the bot, to store his id.

string userId ="123456789"; // For Example
string serviceUrl = "https://telegram.botframework.com"; // For Example

var connector = new ConnectorClient(new Uri(serviceUrl));
IMessageActivity newMessage = Activity.CreateMessageActivity();
newMessage.Type = ActivityTypes.Message;
newMessage.From = new ChannelAccount("<BotId>", "<BotName>");
newMessage.Conversation = new ConversationAccount(false, userId);
newMessage.Recipient = new ChannelAccount(userId);
newMessage.Text = "<MessageText>";
await connector.Conversations.SendToConversationAsync((Activity)newMessage);

The above code comes from here.