I’ve developed a Microsoft Teams bot that is supposed to receive and respond to messages when mentioned, like @rewards add +2 points. However, I’ve encountered an issue where I need to manually add the bot to each conversation for it to work.

In contrast, I’ve noticed that bots available on the Microsoft Teams marketplace, such as Bonusly, can be mentioned and interacted with anywhere in Teams without needing to be added to each thread manually.

I’m wondering if this behavior is due to the bot not being published on the marketplace yet, or if it’s related to how the manifest.json is configured. Could someone explain what might be causing this difference and what steps I should take to ensure my bot behaves like the marketplace bots?

Here are some specifics:

The bot is currently in development and not published on the marketplace.
The manifest.json has been set up to allow bot interactions.
Any insights on how to make my bot accessible across Teams channels and conversations without manual additions would be greatly appreciated!

Here is my manifest.json

{
"$schema": "https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/json-schemas/teams/v1.16/MicrosoftTeams.schema.json",
"manifestVersion": "1.16",
"version": "1.0.0",
"id": "${{TEAMS_APP_ID}}",
"packageName": "com.microsoft.teams.extension",
"developer": {
    "name": "Teams App, Inc.",
    "websiteUrl": "https://www.example.com",
    "privacyUrl": "https://www.example.com/privacy",
    "termsOfUseUrl": "https://www.example.com/termofuse"
},
"icons": {
    "color": "color.png",
    "outline": "outline.png"
},
"name": {
    "short": "Rewards${{APP_NAME_SUFFIX}}",
    "full": "Full name for Rewards"
},
"description": {
    "short": "Short description of Rewards",
    "full": "Full description of Rewards"
},
"accentColor": "#FFFFFF",
"bots": [
    {
        "botId": "${{BOT_ID}}",
        "scopes": [
            "personal",
            "team",
            "groupchat"
        ],
        "supportsFiles": false,
        "isNotificationOnly": false,
        "commandLists": [
            {
                "scopes": [
                    "personal",
                    "team",
                    "groupchat"
                ],
                "commands": [
                    {
                        "title": "helloWorld",
                        "description": "A helloworld command to send a welcome message"
                    }
                ]
            }
        ]
    }
],
"authorization": {
    "permissions": {
        "resourceSpecific": [
            {
                "type": "Application",
                "name": "ChannelMessage.Read.Group"
            },
            {
                "type": "Application",
                "name": "ChatMessage.Read.Chat"
            }
        ]
    }
},
"webApplicationInfo": {
    "id":  "${{BOT_ID}}",
    "resource": "https://Anthing"
},
"composeExtensions": [],
"configurableTabs": [],
"staticTabs": [],
"permissions": [
    "identity",
    "messageTeamMembers"
],
"validDomains": []

}