Getting Started

Overview

Here are the general steps required to get the emulator and your bot communicating:

• Enter your bot's endpoint into the emulator's address bar. This value differs by hosting environment. See sections below for specific scenarios.
• If your bot is running with Microsoft Account (MSA) credentials, enter these credentials too.
• If your bot is hosted remotely, ensure that ngrok tunneling software is installed and configured. The Bot Framework Emulator is tightly integrated with ngrok and can launch it for you when needed. Learn more about what ngrok is, how the emulator utilizes ngrok, and how to configure it: Tunneling (ngrok).
• If you prefer to use alternate tunneling software, you may configure a custom Callback URL in the emulator's App Settings dialog.

Connect to a bot running on localhost

When developing a bot using the BotBuilder SDK, the default endpoint for local debugging is http://localhost:3978/api/messages. This is where the bot will be listening for messages when hosted locally.

For localhost debugging you will not typically need to enter MSA appId or password, although it is supported of your bot requires it.

To connect, enter your bot's endpoint into the address bar and click on the Connect button:

[screenshot]

Connect to a bot hosted remotely

This scenario is similar to the localhost scenario, but you will need to entier bot's MSA appId and password:

[screenshot]

Connect to an Azure Bot App

This scenario is similar the remotely hosted scenario, but there are extra steps involved in discovering your bot's endpoint value.

[screenshot]

Troubleshooting

TODO