Selectable replies to messages sent by bots [canned responses]

[jfrederickson]

Facebook's Messenger bots have a Quick Replies feature. While this maybe doesn't quite make sense for Matrix (since 1-1 chats aren't really a thing) I think it might be useful to allow bots to provide predefined response buttons, such that clicking/tapping them causes your client to say something in the room.

In the case of Riot/Matrix, it might make sense for these buttons to be attached to the message rather than replacing the keyboard as FB's bots do.

As a more concrete example, I have a chatbot that I use with a few friends that provides a "vote" command. You give it a question and a list of choices, and it opens a vote for users in the room:

<jon> #vote start "What kind of pizza should we get?" "Hawaiian" "Cheese" "Pepperoni" "Taco"
<sibylcrypt> Respond with "vote CHOICE" to participate.
<sibylcrypt> All: A vote about "What kind of pizza should we get?" has been called! --- jon --- Sibyldawson, schwabyl
<jon> #vote Taco
<sibylcrypt> Count --- taco: 1, cheese: 0, pepperoni: 0, hawaiian: 0
<jon> #vote stop
<sibylcrypt> Count --- taco: 1, cheese: 0, pepperoni: 0, hawaiian: 0
<sibylcrypt> All:  The vote about "What kind of pizza should we get?" has ended! --- jon --- Sibyldawson, schwabyl

It'd be nice if our bot could provide these choices as buttons, at which point clicking one would send the appropriate message to the room.

[Crupuk]

It would be nice to have this option. 👍

[richvdh]

this is vaguely related to matrix-org/matrix-spec-proposals#441

[moritzdietz]

To add another link to this discussion: this is the design the folks from Mattermost came up with.
https://docs.mattermost.com/developer/interactive-messages.html
Originally suggested/mentioned here: https://matrix.to/#/!YTvKGNlinIzlkMTVRl:matrix.org/$xOB325bXVDzavS7I9HKZUeW_l0BMHxop58dgurz_ROI

[hacker-h]

This feature will be a big step towards an initial competition to telegram bots' fancy interactions, since until now you are limited to emoji reactions and pure messages. Highly looking forward to see these handy buttons in matrix

[svoop]

Any solution which requires extensions or additions to the API, formats etc will take a long time to see the light of the day. (This issue will soon celebrate its 5th birthday.)

How about a more pragmatic approach using existing HTML support?

try the !help command: <button value="!help">click me</button>

This could render a button which when clicked will prefill the reply with whatever is set in the value attribute.