Skype for Business channel doesn't pass authentication credentials correctly

Question

I have a .NET Bot Framework bot created using the template and tested on other channels and in the dashboard.

I've added the Skype for Business channel and performed the PowerShell cmdlets for my tenant. However, I constantly get the reply "Error happened in contacting target user".

I looked in the Bot Framework Dashboard for issues, and the problem is that the Bot Framework is getting back a 401 Unauthorized from my code. Remember that this works fine in other channels.

Suspecting a problem with how Skype for Business passes (or doesn't pass) the authentication tokens I commented out the BotAuthentication decorator. Suddenly everything works fine. So I think there's a problem with the Skype for Business channel and how it passes the authentication credentials, as this situation clearly isn't ideal.

Answer 1

Just to answer my own question on this. The reason I was seeing this problem was because I did not have the latest version of Microsoft.Bot.Builder. I needed to be running 3.5+ and I wasn't. I've written it up here (along with instructions for updating the NuGet package if you need that): https://blog.thoughtstuff.co.uk/2017/06/how-to-enable-your-bot-framework-bot-on-skype-for-business-part-2-or-how-i-followed-the-instructions-and-it-worked/