Bot Framework markdown support by channel

Article
08/22/2016

When developing your Bot Framework bot you want to be sure exactly how your messages are rendering on the different channels that you enable. Plain text messages can look pretty boring, so you might decide to use markdown to create richer text messages. If you are new to markdown, have a quick read here, then the rest of this article will make more sense. Below is an extract taken from the BotBuilder documentation which describes the markdown supported by the Bot Framework itself, however it's important to note that not all channels themselves support markdown:

Bot Framework markdown support

Style			Example
Italic			Italic
Bold			Bold
Header1-5			#H1
Strikethrough			~~text~~
Hr
Unordered list			* text
Ordered list			1. text
Pre			`text`
Block quote			> text
Link			[bing](https://bing.com)
image link			![duck](https://aka.ms/Fo983c)

Sample Bot message

So how does each channel render the text then? Let's consider the following message using markdown:

# Markdown test
**The** *quick* ~~brown~~ fox `jumped`

1.over

2.the

* lazy
* dogs.

A hyperlink for good measure: [Link](https://bing.com)
and now a random picture of a duck ![duck](https://aka.ms/Fo983c)