Version 3.0

Breaking changes

Refactoring

It was decided, due to better maintainability in the future, to split the responsibility on Bot's implementations between different services and not just have everything together in the TelegramBotService or ViberBotService as it would be nearly impossible to extend with the new methods in future.

Instead, now there is IBotService interface that contains all of the methods that will be available to use for all bot services.

Currently, IBotService has only one method send(String chatId) with all methods responsible for sending information to the specified chat. The implementations are TelegramBotSenderService and ViberBotSenderService.

Introducing BotModel class

To be aligned with the OOP style that is being used across the project, I created a new BotModel class which is just a wrapper around the Bot__c sObject record. All references of Bot__c where replaced with that model.

What's New

Decreased Bot Webhook Updates Handling Time

Due to the change in the core of the framework I was able to significantly increase the speed of handling webhook updates.

How it works now:

• The updates are received via the Force.com Site as a guest user
• The platform event is fired, to allow handling the update as an Automated Process instead
• The user, chat, and messages are upserted synchronously accordingly based on the incoming update
• The queueable job is scheduled after that, to handle the update with an Apex handler from the Bot__c record

How it will work:

• The updates are received via the Force.com Site as a guest user (no changes)
• The new background flow is launched under the guest user in the System Context mode (Access All Data)
• The user, chat, and messages are upserted asynchronously using the platform event
• The Bot__c handler implementation is executed in the same transaction
• This change will greatly speed up the processing of the Webhook updates since we avoid two asynchronous executions (one for the platform event, and the second for the queueable job).

Cons:

• Even when running in System Context via the flow, if an Apex class used for handling the updates has the with sharing option, the guest user won't be able to perform CRUD operations on sObjects (read only).
• The Bot__c handler implementation is running in the same transaction, so all the transaction limits are also shared with this framework's implementation.

The new way of handling the webhooks will be enabled by ticking the Handle Webhooks In Separate Transaction setting under the Bot Setting custom metadata type, which is enabled by default.

Better documentation

The documentation now nicely hosted on the GitHub pages using docsify: https://ilyamatsuev.github.io/Apex-ChatBot-Hub/

Also, checkout the page with all Apex Classes definitions: https://ilyamatsuev.github.io/Apex-ChatBot-Hub/#/types

Readonly permission set

For users, who only need to work with the data captured by bots, there's now a Bot Readonly User permission set.

Support sending different message types

It used to be possible to send the text messages only. Now, these message types are supported:

• text
• image
• video
• file
• contact
• location

These are common message types that supported when using a IBotService interface. If you know exactly which service you want to use, you'll have access to more methods, like sending a sticker, venue, or audio (for Telegram).

Example to send an image:

IBotService service = new BotServiceFactory().createBotService(bot);
// Provide string `chatId` where you want to send something
service.send(chatId).image('https://example.com/image.jpeg');

Example to send a sticker for the Telegram bot:

TelegramBotService telegramService = (TelegramBotService) new BotServiceFactory().createBotService(bot);
// The same interface: provide the chat id where we want to send something
service.send(chatId).sticker('some-telegram-sticker-file-id');

More methods can be found in TelegramBotSenderService and ViberBotSenderService.

Support attaching a custom keyboard to a message

If you want your users to have predefined options to choose as a reply on your bot's messages, you can use custom keyboard for both Viber and Telegram bots. Here is how you can have a generic implementation for both messengers:

// Pass the `bot` instance to the factory and create a service (doesn't matter if it's `Viber` or `Telegram` bot)
IBotService service = new BotServiceFactory().createBotService(bot);

// Prepare the list of buttons
List<BotReplyKeyboardButton> replyButtons = new List<BotReplyKeyboardButton> {
    new BotReplyKeyboardButton('Share my contact ☎️').shareContact(),
    new BotReplyKeyboardButton('Share my location 📍').shareLocation(),
    new BotReplyKeyboardButton('I do not wanna share anything 😤')
};

// The `botUserId` is the if of the user to whom you want to send the message
service.send(botUserId).withReplyKeyboard(replyButtons).text('Some informative message!');

That's it. Now the user is going to receive a text message with the 3 buttons as the options for response. And it works in the same way for both Viber and Telegram!

However, Viber and Telegram keyboards are pretty much different and support different features. So, if you want to use something specific for either of these messengers you should use TelegramBotService and TelegramSendKeyboardOptions, or ViberBotService and ViberSendKeyboardOptions via the withReplyKeyboard method. More information about these classes can be found here.

What's Changed

BotAdmin users are now able to see encrypted data

Due to some technical limitation it was necessary to give the permission to the BotAdmin permission set to be able to see the encrypted data, which means that the bots' tokens are now going to be visible for them. So, please assign that permission set carefully!

Fix for an issue when Telegram Message Id was not unique

Due to the format the telegram message ids are generated there was a possibility of the duplicated external id. That should be the case anymore.

Bugfixes

• When using Viber service to send a message, the callout would never fail and throw an exception even if the parameters was incorrect. This is fixed, now the invalid callout will cause the exception, same as for the Telegram bot service.

---

v1.0

The package documentation and demo videos are in the docs folder.

The package supports Telegram and Viber bots.

Please follow the instructions in the README to understand how to install and use the library.

Best Regards!