After paying for the WhatsApp module, you will be able to start the process of connecting WhatsApp Business API on your own via the Settings ➔ Integrations.

If the “Connect” button is inactive, please contact your account manager.

To work with WhatsApp Business API, we use the services of the official provider - 360dialog. The first step of connection is authorisation in the service.

In the opened modal window you can create a personal account with the provider using your personal/work Meta account or email. In addition, if you have already created an account in dialog360, you can login to it using the “Login” button.

The next step is to verify and confirm that:

• You have a personal Meta account
• The phone number you will be using for WABA is not currently linked to your personal WhatsApp app.
• You will be able to confirm ownership of the number by using a code in an SMS or a phone call

If you already have a business account registered and confirmed, please specify this additionally. We recommend that you register your business account in advance, as verification times vary depending on your business, country and other factors. You can find all the information you need about registering a business account. </ignore>здесь. Read more about verifying your business account. </ignore>здесь.

Create or log into a Meta business account to which WABA will be linked. Agree to the requirements.

Next, read the information about what permissions you grant and what features will be available to you after the integration is complete.

In the next step of onboarding, fill in the information about:

• Company name
• Company email (make sure you have access to it)
• Company website or social media page
• Location

The name displayed should be related to your company, match the руководству WhatsApp's name choice and not violate the Торговую the policies of WhatsApp and Политику WhatsApp Business.

Next, you need to select an existing or create a new WhatsApp Business account.

Fill in the required information about your organisation. It will be available for your customers to view, but it can be edited at any time.

Enter the phone number that will be used for WhatsApp Business (the number from which you will send messages to your customers). Confirm ownership of the number by SMS or call.

If this is the first time you are connecting WhatsApp Business API to this number, make sure that this phone is removed from your WhatsApp Personal App or WhatsApp Bussiness App. If your number has already been connected to another provider, port the number first.

After successful confirmation, review the basic features and click “Finish”.

The next step is to automatically set up your WABA. Almost immediately you will see a blue notification that your number will be prepared in a few minutes.

Once you have finished setting up WhatsApp Business, select the number you have bound in the provider window and save the changes. Do not close the window while saving.

It may take some time to connect the number (from several hours to a day). You can track the status in WhatsApp Manager. As soon as the number is confirmed, proceed with the integration connection.

Within a few seconds, the browser window will close and the status of your integration in the enKod window will change to “Connected”.

The 360dialog team will check your account for compliance within two hours and you can start sending messages to WhatsApp.

You can monitor the status of your account in the личном</ignore><ignore> .

Our integration works through an official Meta partner, so we meet all the requirements of the official WABA.

In WABA, two types of messages are available for communication - template and service messages. Each type is limited by its own rules and has different costs.

In addition, it is worth knowing about such a concept as the “24-hour window rule”, which is a rule of the WhatsApp platform. All dialogues are measured by fixed 24-hour sessions (windows). A session opens as soon as the first message is delivered.

If a dialogue is initiated by a user and its purpose is to solve customer issues, the correspondence is categorized as Service conversations.

Additionally, a support window is a rolling 24-hour time period that is updated when a message is received from a customer.

An active dialogue (support window, active session) exists for 24 hours in all standard situations. A business can send free-form messages within the support window. But any message sent to a customer more than 24 hours after their last message must be with an approved template.

If a business sends a template message to a user, starting a dialogue or in response to a user's message, a session is automatically opened that is considered a dialogue initiated by the business.

Read more about dialogue-based billing in the <ignore></ignore>официальной Meta documentation.

Currently, the functionality of incoming messages in our service is under development, so you can start communication with your clients only by sending a template message.

A template is a message content created in advance and confirmed by Meta, which consists of a fixed text in a certain language and dynamic variables in which you can substitute personalised information (name, order number, invoice number, etc.).

You can create a template message in enKod. All templates fall into one of three categories:

• Marketing
• Authentication
• Utility

The content of your post must match the template category, otherwise it will not pass moderation.

Familiarise yourself with the rules of creating templates in the официальной Meta documentation.

To create a message template go to Newsletters ➔ Messages and select “Create WhatsApp template”.

Templates come in two types:

• text
• media and interactive

Text templates contain a title, body text and caption with the ability to personalise the text with variables.

Media and interactive templates can contain an image/video/document and quick reply/call/link buttons.

The template wizard consists of one step where you need to fill in all mandatory fields.

General settings

• Template name - it is used only inside the system and will not be visible to your users
• Template category - must correspond to the content, otherwise the template will not pass moderation
• Template language - must match the text of the message, otherwise the template will not pass moderation

Message text

Fixed message content with variables in the form of {{user_guide:integrations:1}} {{user_guide:integrations:2}} ... {{user_guide:integrations:5}}. The variables can be further populated with content or personalisation tags. You can unify your template to use it in different scenarios and conversations by personalising the text with variables. But you can't put most of your content in variables or create a template that consists only of variables. If you do, it will not pass moderation.

Signature

If you wish, fill in the signature that will be displayed below the text of the message.

General settings

• Template name - it is used only inside the system and will not be visible to your users
• Template category - must correspond to the content, otherwise the template will not pass moderation
• Template language - must match the text of the message, otherwise the template will not pass moderation

Header

You can use as a header:

• Text (maximum 60 characters, no emoji, line breaks, asterisk characters or formatting, will default to bold with a paragraph after itself, you can use 1 variable, e.g. for name)
• Image (you need to attach a link to an example image for moderation, available formats .png .jpg .jpeg)
• Video (you need to attach a link to an example video for moderation, available format is .mp4)
• Document (you need to attach a link to an example document for moderation, available format .pdf)

Body

Fixed message content with variables in the form of {{user_guide:integrations:1}} {{user_guide:integrations:2}} ... {{user_guide:integrations:5}}. The variables can be further populated with content or personalisation tags. You can unify your template to use it in different scenarios and conversations by personalising the text with variables. But you can't put most of your content in variables or create a template that consists only of variables. If you do, it will not pass moderation.

Signature

If you wish, fill in the signature that will be displayed below the text of the message.

Buttons

A total of two categories of buttons are available:

• Callback and/or link
• Quick reply

Callback and/or link

You can add a maximum of 2 buttons, one of which will be a clickable link and the other a phone number. Or you can add only one link button or only one phone number button.

For each of the buttons you need to fill in the button text - maximum 20 characters.

For a button with a URL in the link, it is allowed to use one variable to personalise this link.

Quick Reply

You can add a maximum of 3 buttons, for each of which you fill in:

• Button text (maximum 20 characters)
• Message text (free-form text that will be sent to the contact when he/she clicks on the corresponding button)

Link/call buttons cannot be used in conjunction with quick reply buttons.

If you want to save a template while creating it, but you haven't filled in all the fields yet, you can save a draft, just like in the case of any other channel.

After creating a template, it will be sent to Meta for moderation. Moderation takes several minutes to a day, on average - 5-20 minutes. You can be guided by the status of the template in the list:

• On moderation - the status is assigned immediately after creating a template
• Confirmed - the template has successfully passed moderation and you can start working with it.
• Rejected - the template was rejected by Meta moderators, read about the reasons for rejection. здесь
• Draft - a template that you have not yet sent for moderation, but saved for further editing.

Once your template has successfully passed moderation, you can create a script message based on it. To do this, go to Newsletters ➔ Messages and select “Create script message”.

In the script message wizard, you need to select a template, fill in the content variables and provide links to attachments.

When creating a message, fill in the three sections of the settings.

Message name

You can use any characters you like. The name is necessary so that you can find the desired message in the list or select it in the script.

Selecting a template

Only confirmed WhatsApp templates are available. After selection, you need to fill in the content variables if you used them when creating the template, as well as links to images, videos or document for media templates. In the variables you can substitute:

• any text
• personalisation tags (contact information, data field values)

To use personalisation tags in variables, open the dynamic content manager, click on the required field and the DK will be inserted in the place where your cursor was.

Tags

A WhatsApp channel script message is a message just like an email, text or push. You can attach tags to it to use them to filter your list of messages.

To check if dynamic content is displayed correctly, you can test your post:

• Send the test to the phone number your WhatsApp account is linked to
• Generate a preview using a phone number that is in the enKod database

After creating a WhatsApp message, you can select it in the message sending block in scenarios. Messages in “Active” and “Inactive” statuses are available for selection. Read more about scenarios in this section of the manual.

enKod can receive incoming messages from your customers. They will be displayed in the “WhatsApp Dialogues” section of the Newsletter menu. If the contact who wrote to you is not in the database, we will automatically add him/her when receiving a message and display correspondence with him/her in “Dialogues”. An incoming message from a contact outside the window of one of the three categories or a free-form reply outside the category window opens the “Сервисный dialogue” - correspondence to solve a client request.

You can reply to customers on their free-form messages (replies within the 24th window will be free). But free-form writing is the first thing a business cannot do.

In the dialogue with the contact, the events of sending template messages will be displayed, so that you can put together the chain of communications in the correct chronological sequence when communicating.

You can use contact tags for easy navigation through correspondence or in case different managers are responsible for customers with different parameters. You can also go to the contact card from the correspondence.

You can view the statistics of your WhatsApp channel:

• In the WhatsApp template details (Newsletters ➔ WhatsApp Templates ➔ Template Details ➔ Statistics). You can filter the statistics of a template by the specific scenario messages in which it is used
• In the scenario message details (Newsletters ➔ Scenario messages ➔ Message details ➔ Statistics)

General statistics on the channel is available in the section Newsletters ➔ Reports with WhatsApp filter installed