When it comes to bot conversation in group chats, let us look at the following situation:
One member of a group chat wants to ask a bot for help. He types “/pplfind zoom expert” which triggers a bot to provide him with a selection of known people with the given keywords. Now HE (and only he) should see the result of the query and then select an appropriate person to a) add/invite to the group chat and b) share a message why he was added with the rest of the group.
Therefore we need a possibility that a bot can “speak” with a single individual from the team. A targeted message directly to this user as a bot 1:1 interaction that no other user can see would solve this.
Are there already plans for adding this “targeted message” thing to the bot architecture you are building?
Right now you can technically do this. When a bot command is initiated you will get a payload with 3 pieces of data, the accountID, from_JID, and the user_JID.
So if you wanted to send a message directly to the user you could use the user JID instead of the group JID. You could build this logic on your side for when a message should be private or public.
Nevertheless, a user may be confused if the reaction to a message in one chat happens in another chat. It would be better to display bot responses not as another direct messaging chat, but as a sort of popup targeted message right where the user is focused on.
Mostly these bot messages tell something or ask for selection or input. They do not need to be saved, they are used as intermediate steps in a bot conversation.