Hyperlinks are opening in Web Chat.

[gauravrattan1980]

Hi All,

I am using Web Chat Channel with Microsoft Bot Framework and its opening Hyperlinks posted inside chat in Web Chat Channel itself.
Note: This functionality was working fine till yesterday and it was opening different browser window for hyperlinks posted inside chat. We are using this from last 1 month and it suddenly stops's working.

Please help?

Thanks
Gaurav

[danmarshall]

Hi @gauravrattan1980 - thank you for reporting this. We recently switched markdown libraries, I'm suspecting this may be the cause. Are your links sent in markdown?

[gauravrattan1980]

Yes you are correct. We have used markdowns for out hyperlinks...

Thanks
Gaurav

[gauravrattan1980]

Can u give me idea, how long it will take to fix this issue.

Thanks in advance....

[danmarshall]

I will be working on this quite soon :) are you building your own WebChat? Or are you retrieving botchat.js off a CDN ?

[gauravrattan1980]

For our demo purpose, I have just enabled Web Chat channel from Microsoft Bot framework. In future we are thinking to build our own WebChat.

Thanks
Gaurav

[danmarshall]

Hi Guarav - We should be deploying this sometime soon. Meanwhile I have sent a PR containing the fix #455

[gauravrattan1980]

Thanks for your swift response...

[danmarshall]

Hi Guarav, it may not be deployed until late tomorrow at the earliest, so can you please use a temporary workaround: shift-click the links. Sorry about the inconvenience.

[gauravrattan1980]

Hi Dan,
Any idea when will above changes get deployed? Thanks...

[danmarshall]

Hi @gauravrattan1980 - it should deploy on Monday. We did not want to deploy during //build

[gauravrattan1980]

Any information on above issue??

[gauravrattan1980]

Thx mate... It's working now...

[danmarshall]

@GeekTrainer can we get a new npm package to close this issue?

[GeekTrainer]

Just published.

[danmarshall]

Hi @bramhechatejas thank you for reporting this. Can you please tell me how your WebChat is hosted? Is it an iframe of webchat.botframework.com or is it your own hosted WebChat page?

[danmarshall]

@bramhechatejas are you using the "enable preview" option on the WebChat configuration page? If so, this may be the older WebChat control. Otherwise, can you provide a sample of the markdown with hyperlinks and can you tell me if it is on a card attachment or directly in the message?

[danmarshall]

@bramhechatejas can you copy your markdown with the links so that we can reproduce the error? Or perhaps share your link?

[danmarshall]

Hi @bramhechatejas thank you for that link. I was able to reproduce your error. Your bot was sending an html bit inside the message:

...In case of any queries <a href='https://www.gslab.com/'>Visit GS Lab</a>

the <a> tag should not be supported, we will need to disable this functionality. You can use markdown to enable this:

...In case of any queries [Visit GS Lab](https://www.gslab.com)

[billba]

@bramhechatejas the actual bug here is that HTML tags should be ignored in the text. The only way your bot should communicate links is via Markdown syntax. This bug is being fixed (see #606) and once it's merged, if you don't change to Markdown syntax, your behavior will go from "links open in chat window" to "links don't work at all."

[SwedhaBalasubramanian]

Is there a way how to include the hyperlink in Workplace/Facebook? Markdown is not working in Facebook