Agents Playground breaks markdown rendering when suggestedActions is present on the activity

Question

Agents Playground breaks markdown rendering when suggestedActions is present on the activity

Ronit 5

I'm building a Teams bot using @microsoft/agents-activity (v1.2.3) and @microsoft/agents-hosting (v1.2.3). I'm adding dynamic suggestedActions to my bot's reply activity.

When I set suggestedActions on the same activity that contains markdown-formatted text, the Microsoft 365 Agents Playground stops rendering markdown -- it shows raw ##, **, - etc. as plain text.

If I remove suggestedActions from the activity (same text, same entities, same channelData), the markdown renders correctly.

Payload comparison (from logs):

Working (no suggestedActions):
{
"type": "message",
"text": "## Heading\n\n- **Bold item**\n...[1]",
"inputHint": "acceptingInput",
"entities": [...],
"channelData": { "feedbackLoop": { "type": "default" } }
}

Broken (with suggestedActions):

{
"type": "message",
"text": "## Heading\n\n- **Bold item**\n...[1]",
"inputHint": "acceptingInput",
"entities": [...],
"channelData": { "feedbackLoop": { "type": "default" } },
"suggestedActions": {
"actions": [
{ "type": "imBack", "title": "Example question?", "value": "Example question?" }
],
"to": ["user-id"]
}
}

The only difference is the presence of suggestedActions. The text, entities, and channelData are identical.

Questions:

Is this a known limitation of the Agents Playground?
Does this issue also occur in real Teams, or is it Playground-specific?
Is there a recommended workaround for testing suggested actions with markdown content in the Playground?

Environment:

@microsoft/agents-activity: 1.2.3
@microsoft/agents-hosting: 1.2.3
Testing in: Microsoft 365 Agents Playground

Tags: microsoft-teams, bot-framework, suggested-actions, agents-playground

P.S I can't test this in real teams env as it isnt enabled for our company yet. It is still 1-2 months before we get that sorted

Ronit Dahiya 0 Reputation points

2026-03-09T21:26:32.9633333+00:00

The difference in the formatting
Ronit 5 Reputation points

2026-03-09T21:27:22.3166667+00:00
Follow-up: Two approaches tested and their behavior in the Playground

We tried two approaches to implement suggested actions. Both work correctly in terms of functionality, but behave differently in the Agents Playground.

Approach 1: suggestedActions on the same activity (recommended per docs)

const activity = AIMessage(responseText); // Set suggestedActions directly on the AI response activity.suggestedActions = { actions: suggestions.slice(0, 3).map((title: string) => ({ type: "imBack" as const, title, value: title, })), to: [context.activity.from?.id ?? ""], }; await context.sendActivityWithRetry(activity);

Result: Suggested action buttons appear correctly. However, markdown rendering in the message text is broken in the Playground -- raw ##, **, - shown as plain text. Removing suggestedActions from the same activity immediately fixes the markdown rendering.

Approach 2: suggestedActions as a separate follow-up activity

// 1. Send the AI response first (untouched) const activity = AIMessage(responseText); await context.sendActivityWithRetry(activity); // 2. Send suggested actions as a separate message // (follows the pattern from the official Microsoft sample: // https://github.com/OfficeDev/Microsoft-Teams-Samples/blob/main/samples/bot-suggested-actions/nodejs/bots/suggestedActionsBot.js) const suggestionsReply = MessageFactory.text("Here are some things you can ask:"); suggestionsReply.suggestedActions = { actions: suggestions.slice(0, 3).map((title: string) => ({ type: "imBack" as const, title, value: title, })), to: [context.activity.from?.id ?? ""], }; await context.sendActivityWithRetry(suggestionsReply);

Result: Markdown rendering works correctly on the AI response. Suggested action buttons appear correctly. However, this creates a second visible message bubble ("Here are some things you can ask:") which is not ideal for every turn.

Summary:

Approach 1 is the correct single-message approach, but the Playground breaks markdown when suggestedActions is present.

Approach 2 works around the rendering issue but introduces a second message bubble.

The underlying question remains: why does the Playground fail to render markdown when suggestedActions is on the activity?

1 answer

Your answer

Ronit Dahiya 0 Reputation points

2026-03-09T21:26:32.9633333+00:00

The difference in the formatting

Answer 1

Hi @Ronit

Thank you for posting your question in the Microsoft Q&A forum.

Please note that this is a user-to-user support forum. Moderators, contributors, and external Microsoft employees do not have access to back-end systems to investigate root causes. Our role here is limited to sharing technical guidance based on publicly available resources and experience.

For deeper investigation, I recommend opening a new issue on GitHub, where developers and contributors who work with the Agents SDK and Teams platform may provide additional insights.
For reference: Participating in a discussion - GitHub Docs.

Based on the behavior you described and the payload comparison, the activity structure you are sending appears valid. The suggestedActions property can be included on the same message activity that contains markdown text, and this pattern is supported by the Bot Framework activity schema.

The behavior you are observing is likely related to how the Microsoft 365 Agents Playground renderer processes activities that include suggestedActions, rather than an issue with the activity payload itself.

At this time, there is no official Microsoft documentation indicating that markdown formatting is disabled when suggestedActions are present. Inline suggestedActions on the same message activity is a supported Bot Framework pattern.

There is also no documentation suggesting that this behavior occurs in the Microsoft Teams client.

Your current workaround, sending the markdown response first and then sending suggestedActions in a follow-up activity, is a reasonable approach when testing in the Playground. However, for production scenarios in Teams, you can continue using the single-message approach with suggestedActions included in the same activity.

Note: Please follow the steps in our documentation to enable e-mail notifications if you want to receive the related email notification for this thread.

Sayali-MSFT 5,191 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff Moderator

2026-03-10T07:30:54.0366667+00:00

Hello Ronit ,Could you please confirm if your issue has resolved with provided suggestions or still looking for any help?
Ronit Dahiya 0 Reputation points

2026-03-10T07:33:12.9266667+00:00

I am still looking for a better answer. This isn't a definitive answer as of why/what is breaking the markdown rendering on playground env and as for real teams env, That is what I am unable to test on my end.
Teddie-D 12,845 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff Moderator

2026-03-11T04:14:19.3+00:00

Hi @Ronit
I understand that you are looking for a more definitive explanation of why the markdown rendering changes when suggestedActions are present in the activity.

However, as mentioned earlier, this forum operates as a user-to-user support platform. Moderators and contributors do not have access to the internal implementation of the Microsoft 365 Agents Playground renderer or the backend services used by the Teams platform. Because of that, we cannot determine the exact internal reason why the Playground behaves this way.

Since the issue seems to be specific to the Agents Playground rendering environment, identifying the exact cause would require investigation by the SDK or platform maintainers. So, the best path forward would be to open an issue in the relevant GitHub repository so the maintainers or engineers working on the Agents SDK and Playground renderer can review the behavior and confirm whether it is an implementation issue or an expected limitation.

Thank you for your understanding.

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Agents Playground breaks markdown rendering when suggestedActions is present on the activity

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