The Adaptive Cards community call for August, hosted by Matt Hidinger, also included guest speakers Hammad Hassan and Tomasz Poszytek.
Adaptive Cards v1.3 is now available!
On this call we reviewed the Adaptive Cards v1.3 release, which includes the most-requested feature of the past 2 years: Input Validation and Input Labels!
With this release you’ll be able to mark which Inputs are required, as well as any regex-based pattern matching for text, and min/max ranges for things like numbers and dates.
We’ve also streamlined the Input schema by adding a label property, which improves the interaction model, automatically renders those red-asterisk “required field indicators”, and greatly improves accessibility for Inputs.
Screenshot of an Input with a label and isRequired validation:
➡ Try it yourself in the Designer
Example Card with Input Validation and Labels:
{
"type": "AdaptiveCard",
"$schema": "http://adaptivecards.io/schemas/adaptive-card.json",
"version": "1.3",
"body": [
{
"type": "Input.Text",
"id": "name",
"placeholder": "First, last",
"label": "Please enter your name",
"isRequired": true,
"errorMessage": "Name is required"
}
],
"actions": [
{
"type": "Action.Submit",
"title": "Save"
}
]
}
What we’re doing to improve rendering consistency on every platform
Adaptive Cards are designed to work great on every major platform, and that means all the features, functionality, styles, and behaviors need to work consistently everywhere that Adaptive Cards are supported.
Hammad Hassan is an intern with us this summer and set out to improve the guarantees we make along those lines. He kicked off a project called “Consistent Cards“ that facilitates rapid end-to-end testing of any changes we make to the various renderers and instantly see how the various payloads look on live machines.
It works by sending a card payload through virtual machines that are hosting our Adaptive Card renderers on the various platforms, like NodeJS, .NET WPF, Android, and UWP. Below is a screenshot of a card that has been rendered live, on all 4 platforms, and returns their screenshots to the web app. This allows us to quickly see differences and troubleshoot visual bugs on the different UI stacks.
Currently, this tool is used internally for us during development, but we see the value of it being publicly available. We don’t have any plans to share on this front just yet but keep us posted if this is something you would be interested in!
To learn more, check out the project outline and spec or just jump right into the source code.
Automating real-world scenarios using Power Automate
Lastly, Tomasz Poszytek, a Power Platform MVP, walked through some amazing real-world business processes that can be streamlined and improved using Power Automate. Take a look at the call below to get the full details!
Watch the call here
Resources from this month’s call
- Watch the latest Adaptive Cards session from Build 2020
- Adaptive Cards Roadmap
- Adaptive Card Templating Overview
- Adaptive Card Template Service
- https://aka.ms/ACFeatures – Let us know what features you need
Next month’s call will be held on Thursday, September 10, 2020 at 9:00am PST. We look forward to talking to you then! Download a recurring calendar invite here at https://aka.ms/adaptivecardscommunitycall.
Check out the previous month’s call recording on our Office Development YouTube Channel
Adaptive Cards feedback channels
The Adaptive Cards developer community call is on the 2nd Thursday of each month. We will provide you with the opportunity to learn about Adaptive Cards in general, how they could be a great tool in your applications and contribute to the evolution of the format and SDKs. Each month, we’ll discuss new features we are bringing to the platform, our roadmap, and listen to your feedback and suggestions.
