[Bug]: Adding reactions never works

[jerbob92]

Bug Description

When you call the reactions API, I can't seem to add a reaction.

ctx.api.reactions.add(ctx.activity.conversation.id, ctx.activity.id, "heart")
results in:
405 Method Not Allowed

While await app.api.reactions.add(ctx.activity.conversation.id, ctx.activity.id, "heart") results in:
results in:
404 Not Found

I based it on this code: https://github.com/microsoft/teams.py/blob/main/examples/reactions/src/main.py

Steps to Reproduce

1. Send a message to the bot
2. Try to add a reaction to the message
3. Get errors

Expected Behavior

That the reaction is added to the message

Actual Behavior

HTTP errors

SDK Version

2.0.0a20

Python Version

3.14.2

Additional Context

No response

[heyitsaamir]

Hello @jerbob92 !

Yeah, i think we released it with "Experimental", but it should really be more of a "coming soon". We are figuring out the best way to early-release these features. Sorry about the confusion here. The features will be live soon though. (same with TargetedMessages in #334 )

[jerbob92]

@heyitsaamir Ah got it, thanks. How/where are these things announced when to go live?

[heyitsaamir]

@heyitsaamir Ah got it, thanks. How/where are these things announced when to go live?

There will be a blog post, but we're also working on improving that so it's easier for developers to be aware! I will have a more concrete answer for you this week.

[corinagum]

Reopening while I investigate - @jerbob92 is reporting the above error codes despite reactions now being in fully deployed preview.

@jerbob92, could you please share your tenant id?

[jerbob92]

@corinagum tenant ID is 407f8620-a369-4bd8-a231-e28ce9b82f93

[corinagum]

Thanks @jerbob92. I'm waiting to hear back from the service side to check whether or not your tenant may be behind some kind of feature gating. In the meantime, I tried repro-ing your scenarios:

• For the 404, here's the explanation:

  • ctx.api is the "inside-handler" API. It's bound to the incoming activity's regional serviceUrl, so it always targets the correct Teams region for that conversation
  • app.api is the proactive/outside a handler API. It uses the app-level serviceUrl (default placeholder, or whatever you set SERVICE_URL to) and is intended for cases where you don't have an incoming activity. Both of your snippets use ctx, which is implied to be inside @app.on_message, so the right one to use is ctx.api.reactions.add(. Are both the calls you shared inside an @app.on_message handler or similar?

• For the 405 issue, I re-ran the code and got 200s/expected behavior, so I'm unable to reproduce the 405 on my tenant. Could you provide some further information? The snippet you posted is missing await. As written, it returns an unawaited coroutine and no actual HTTP request, so it shouldn't reproduce a 405 by itself. To dig further, please share:

  • The exact code you're running that produces the 405 (with the await)
  • The full URL from the 405 exception message
  • MS-CV header from the response if available
  • Timestamp of when you received the 405
  • Whether you are on a commercial, regional or sovereign tenant

This will help further pin down what's going on while I also look into the gating possibility.

[jerbob92]

@corinagum for the sake of testing I tried adding the code directly in the on_message handler and noticed the following:

Works (200, URL: https://smba.trafficmanager.net/emea/407f8620-a369-4bd8-a231-e28ce9b82f93/v3/conversations/19:ade529e0702b4caa9a6b4e75ead5ed05@thread.tacv2;messageid=1779284560428/activities/1779430582995/reactions/heart):

    await ctx.api.reactions.add(ctx.activity.conversation.id, ctx.activity.id, "heart")

Doesn't work (404, URL: https://smba.trafficmanager.net/teams/v3/conversations/19:ade529e0702b4caa9a6b4e75ead5ed05@thread.tacv2;messageid=1779284560428/activities/1779430582995/reactions/like)

    await app.api.reactions.add(ctx.activity.conversation.id, ctx.activity.id, "like")

However, I don't have access to ctx anymore because our messages are handled async. I do have the ConversationReference, so also the service_url, which would probably have the correct URL then? Any idea why the regional endpoint does work but the global one doesn't?

I can't reproduce the 405 anymore.

[corinagum]

Hey @jerbob92, thank you for the investigation and reply.

On the 405: great, based off what you've told us, it looks like the 405 was a transient issue related to the rollout.

404: This was an interesting learning dive for me. The default /teams/ URL relies on global routing on the service. It looks like this aspect may not be fully rolled out for reactions: reactions don't yet rewrite to the correct regional endpoint, so the request lands at the wrong url. @heyitsaamir and I are tracking this conversation locally and following up for more information right now.

Your workaround using ctx.activity to include region is correct, and yes ConversationReference.service_url is what you need.

api = ApiClient(
       service_url=conversation_ref.service_url,
       options=app.http_client.clone(ClientOptions(token=app._get_bot_token)), # from App
       api_client_settings=app.options.api_client_settings,
       cloud=app.cloud,
   )
   await api.reactions.add(conversation_ref.conversation.id, activity_id, "heart")

This is definitely a workaround because it uses _get_bot_token. If this isn't available, another option is to construct ApiClient directly with your own HTTP client and the bot's Entra access token.

Will report back when I have confirmation/more information regarding global/regional routing.

[jerbob92]

@corinagum thanks for looking into it! We already had a workaround in place because reactions were not supported at all when we needed this, so I'll keep that in place until this is resolved.