Migrating Adaptive/Waterfall Dialogs from Bot Framework SDK to Agents SDK

[Shivam-a0621]

Hi,

We are currently migrating our production bot from the Bot Framework SDK (botbuilder-python) to the
Microsoft 365 Agents SDK (microsoft-agents-* packages). Our existing bot heavily relies on
dialog-based conversation flows, specifically:

• WaterfallDialogs for multi-step sequential workflows .
• DialogState management for tracking conversation position across turns

These patterns are central to how we orchestrate multi-turn conversations, and we don't see an
equivalent to botbuilder-dialogs in the Agents SDK package surface.

Our questions:

1. Is there a planned replacement or recommended alternative for botbuilder-dialogs in the Agents
   SDK?
2. What is the suggested approach for implementing multi-step, stateful conversation flows?
3. Are there any migration guides, samples, or reference implementations for moving dialog-heavy
   bots to the Agents SDK?

Thank you!

[tracyboehrer]

@Shivam-a0621 Let's be clear on the type of dialogs. "Adaptive" is quite different from "Waterfall". The description indicates the functionality in Dialogs. Adaptive Dialogs will not be supported in Agents SDK. But there are plans to bring the functionality in botbuilder-dialogs forward.

@MattB-msft Do we have a timeline for when this would happen?

[MattB-msft]

@Shivam-a0621
In general we are trying to guide folks away from the botframework dialogs systems as there are many better options implemented by orchestrators for deterministic flows,

That said Dialogs are a compatibility commitment for us and we will get this port prioritized for migration, its been low priority item due to the very low adoption of BotFramework Python.

We will get this picked up in the next month or so once we complete OTEL work that is in flight.
Im going to move this feature over to our Python repo for tracking,

[Shivam-a0621]

Thanks @MattB-msft @tracyboehrer for clarity and making this a high priority feature.

[rodrigobr-msft]

Once the PR is merged, you will be able to find the source code for a few ported BotFramework dialog samples in test_samples/compat/dialogs