Support for Loading messages on demand

In Xamarin's CollectionView there is a RemainingItemsThresholdReachedCommand attribute that allows you to support lazy loading. Once the user scrolls passed a certain point, a command can be called to load in more messages for example.

RadChat has an InputAreaBackgroundColor property, but it would be nice to be able to have full control over the UI of the entire input area. For example, I have the following UI from my designers that I cannot currently implement using RadChat:

Adding an InputAreaControlTemplate would be much appreciated.

Currently, when the user opens the chat screen, the app gets the messages and scrolls to the bottom by default. The user wants to get more messages from the server as he/her scrolls up.

Currently, the HealthcareAssistant demo is lacking in features. For example there are no pickers or any commonly used cards.

Although the TravelAssistant demo does have these features implemented, we would specifically like to see the HealthcareAssistant implementation of them. As it is now, we find it lacking and not a helpful demonstration.

To illustrate what I mean, please refer to the attached screenshot as just one of the possible responses that not currently covered by the example.

Thank you.

Provide support for MS Bot Framework adaptive cards

Please add pull to refresh support for the conversational UI. I am aware that the the RadListView supports pull to refresh however the ChatListView implemented by the Conversational UI does not.  

Capability to automatically detect the at symbol "@" for mentions (maybe against a collection of 'contacts') and the ability to detect the pound symbol '#' for hashtag creation.

A NullReferenceException is thrown when navigating back from a page that contains a RadChat.

Currently, the Avatar property is a string for a path, this is problematic and only support two scenarios (file and uri paths).

I'm requesting that this be changed to be of type ImageSource, which matches the paradigm used by all other Image controls in Xamarin.Forms. This would allow stream and byte[] sources as well as file and uri paths.

Note:

This doesn't have to be a breaking change, you can use an implicit conversion just like Xamarin.Forms Image source does. The only disruption would be if anyone assigned the string value in code instead of a binding.

The  Conversational UI is a nice control , but it is limited. The Following will make life easier for the developer .

 

1) A Custom Template that can allow the user add buttons and customize the send button , like whatsup does, it has "Voice Note" , "Image Attachments" etc..

2) Also allow the user to be able to add images on the chat control itself.

 

 

This would allow the user to set advanced Entry properties and layouts.

One such use case was requested:

Set the Entry's MaxLength and add an inline "215/300" to inform the user of how many characters are left for that message.