Start a new conversation with SlackBot without creating a new channel

I’ve uploaded the AnnotatedSandwich sample to my own Azure app service and successfully added the Slack connector so I can order sandwiches through a Slack channel… so far so good!

However, after I’ve completed the dialog once on my channel, the bot doesn’t respond in the channel anymore and I can’t reset it.

I’m aware that a new conversationId is required to kick start a new dialog, however it appears conversationId is always set to the channel name which means I can only start a new dialog if I start a new channel.

https://github.com/Microsoft/BotBuilder/blob/master/Node/src/bots/SlackBot.ts#L339

     private fromSlackMessage(msg: ISlackMessage): IMessage { 
331         return { 
332             type: msg.type, 
333             id: msg.ts, 
334             text: msg.text, 
335             from: { 
336                 channelId: 'slack', 
337                 address: msg.user 
338             }, 
339             channelConversationId: msg.channel, 
340             channelData: msg 
341         }; 
342     } 
343  

Is this by design? Are there other ways to kick start a dialog without creating a new channel (which is a hassle)?

[StephenTung-CR]

Just for everyone’s info, I ended up adding a hack to reset the DialogState in the controller @willportnoy suggested:

        public async Task<Message> Post([FromBody]Message message)
        {
            if (message.Type == "Message")
            {
                // dirty hack for now
                if (message.Text.ToLowerInvariant() == "reset")
                {
                    message.BotPerUserInConversationData = null;
                }

                return await Conversation.SendAsync(message, MakeRootDialog);
            }
            else
            {
                return HandleSystemMessage(message);
            }
        }

[Stevenic]

Oh I see… You’re using C# 😃 I’ll get one of the C# guys to help you out.