Before you start connecting your WhatsApp channel read the necessary information and requirements on the links:

• How to comply with the WhatsApp Business Messaging and Commerce policies
• 360dialog Client Terms of Service

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 the number you have selected is already linked to your personal WhatsApp app, you need to delete it on the device with a logged in WhatsApp account. Press More options ➔ Settings ➔ Account ➔ Delete account. Enter the number to delete in international format with the country code and tap Delete Account. Select the reason for deleting the account from the drop-down menu. Confirm the deletion. The number is usually unlinked within a few minutes.

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 here. Read more about verifying your business account here.

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 Display Name Guidelines and not violate the WhatsApp Business Messaging Policy.

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 «Ok».

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 personal page .

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 official Meta documentation.

Template is a pre-created and validated Meta message content, which consists of fixed text in a specific language and dynamic variables in that you can substitute with personalized information (name, order number, account number, etc.).

You can create a template message in enKod. All templates belong to one of the categories:

• Marketing
• Utility

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

If a message template reaches the lowest quality rating (status Active - Low quality in your WA Business manager), it is automatically paused. The duration of the pause is as follows:

• for the 1st time: paused for 3 hours
• for the 2nd time: paused for 6 hours
• for the 3rd time: disabled

The quality score of a template depends on its usage, feedback and customer engagement. You can read more in Meta documentation.

Starting April 1, 2024, Meta will take template readability into account as a key factor determining the quality of Marketing templates, in addition to the existing metrics: number of blocks and spam complaints. Meta will now temporarily suspend mailings with Marketing templates when readability is low, giving you time to edit the templates with the lowest level of engagement.

If you receive a status_change notification for a template, you can:

• edit the template to make it comply with Meta's policy and resubmit it for review
• create a new template based on Meta's recommendations and submit it for moderation
• request a review through the quality service in your WA Business Manager account (Account Quality ➔ Request review)

As of April 1, 2024, Meta has set a limit on the number of “Marketing dialogs” (Marketing) a user can receive from any company within a certain period of time. The limitation only affects Marketing templates that start a new dialog. If a “Marketing dialog” is already open, the restriction will not apply to sending Marketing templates in it. You can read more in documentation 360dialog.

If a marketing template message is not delivered to a user due to a limit, the API will return an error code Message Undeliverable (“Unable to deliver message”), which you can view in the statistics. Note that this error code covers a wide range of issues that can cause a message to be undeliverable, and for privacy reasons Meta does not directly specify the limit restriction as the cause of undeliverability.

Whether a WhatsApp Business API account can send a message depends on:

• message limits - how many messages can be sent from a WhatsApp Business account depends on how often you initiate conversations with unique customers, status (whether it is connected) and your number quality rating
• bandwidth limits - how many messages per second a WABA account can handle,
• template pacing (Pacing, for Marketing templates only)
• template qualities
• message limits for dialog-opening Marketing templates.

You can read more about the rules and features of sending messages at 360dialog.

Please also note that the phone number registered in WhatsApp Business API cannot be changed. It is allowed to delete and add a new one.

To delete a number, go to your personal 360 dialog, “Details” tab. Scroll down to the “Cancel payment” button. In the modal window that pops up when you click on it, confirm deletion of the number by clicking on “Cancel subscription”.

Add a number can be:

• within the enKod integration by selecting an existing business account / creating a new one
• in 360 dialog
• on the WhatsApp Manager page

The number will not be permanently deleted immediately. Usually, it happens on the last day of the month.

You can read more about adding and deleting numbers in your WABA account here.

Limits on sending messages regulated by Meta

Meta allocates 5 levels of sending limits per day:

• 250 correspondence
• 1000 unique clients
• 10,000 unique clients
• 100 000 unique clients
• unlimited number

Moving from the first tier (250) to the next (1000) requires going through the process of verification of a WhatsApp business account. However, as of October 31, 2023, such a transition is available to all 360dialog customers without verification as long as the rules are followed:

• initiate conversations with 1,000 unique users within a 30-day period
• maintain a high quality rating

As soon as the volume and quality targets are reached, Meta will automatically change the message limit to a higher level.

Thereafter, the limits change automatically depending on the status of the phone number (whether it is connected), its quality rating and how often you start correspondences with unique customers.

Automatic level increase

With the start of each new correspondence with a unique client, Meta checks if your limit needs to be increased. This depends on the following criteria:

• your phone number must have a “Connected” status
• your phone number must have a medium or high quality rating
• you must have started X or more conversations with unique users in the last seven days, where X is the current limit divided by 2.

If all requirements are met, Meta will increase the restriction by one level after 24 hours.

Automatic downgrade.

If your number has a “Marked” rating in the last 7 days, Meta will immediately lower your restriction by one level.

You can read more about posting restrictions at here.

In enKod, you will not be able to send more messages than are available to you under your current limit. Such messages will be listed as “Not Sent” in the WhatsApp template details with the appropriate error text. Attempting to exceed your sending limit does not affect the quality of your account, and messages beyond the allowed number will simply not be sent.

You can find out your current limit in the Meta Business Manager or your personal 360dialog account.

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

Please note, you will not be able to submit templates with invalid structure for moderation. Frequent causes of errors when creating a template:

• Template purpose is not clear, concise, or well-written. For example, Hi, {{1}} {{2}} Thank you. is vague and not clear how it would be used or what the placeholder values represent
• Template placeholders are not sequential in order. For example, {{1}} and {{2}} and {{4}} are included but the placeholder {{3}} does not exist in the template
• Template placeholders cannot be right next to each other like {{1}} {{2}}
• Template content is identical to the content of another existing template
• Template's name has already been used for another template
• Template body cannot start or end with a placeholder
• Template body cannot have more than two consecutive \n newline characters
• Templates with Text headers cannot have emojis, asterisks, formatting markup, or the \n newline character
• Call to action button URL contains a direct link to WhatsApp, such as «https://wa.me/14154443344», which Meta does not allow.

To create a message template go to Mailings ➔ 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.

Footer

If you wish, fill in the footer 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.

Footer

If you wish, fill in the footer 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 here
• 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 scenario message based on it. To do this, go to Mailings ➔ Messages and select «Create scenario message».

In the scenario 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 scenario.

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 DC will be inserted in the place where your cursor was.

Tags

A WhatsApp channel scenario 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

If you have problems with test sending, make sure that:

• the WhatsApp integration (under Settings ➔ EnKod Integrations) is active, the number is not blocked in WhatsApp Business Manager and is fully registered in 360dialog
• the required custom field values of the contact to whom you want to send the test message are filled in for output

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 knowledge base.

When your template has been successfully moderated, you can also send WhatsApp messages off-scenario. To do so, go to Mailings ➔ Messages and select «Create message».

Currently available ways to send:

• instant messaging
• scheduled messaging
• by API (you can see the description of the method for sending in our API documentation

The process of completing the message is identical to the one described in section “Creating WhatsApp scenario messages”.

You can also send WhatsApp message templates to a specific contact:

• with whom you have already opened a dialog once, from Mailings → WhatsApp dialogs.
• whose phone number is stored in the enKod contact database: Mailings → WhatsApp dialogs → Find Contact. The phone number of a contact from the database is searched only by full match: to find a contact with whom a dialog has not yet been opened, enter the full phone number correctly. An incomplete match will find contacts with whom a dialog has already been opened. When you create a dialog, all events of messages sent to this contact up to the current moment (if any) will be displayed.

Please note, if there are buttons in the template you send - they will be displayed unclickable for you in the dialogs, only the recipient can click on them.

enKod can receive incoming messages from your customers. They will be displayed in the «WhatsApp Dialogues» section of the Mailings 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 «service 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 a business can not write a free-for message to a customer first. Each free-form message sent by enKod has a person icon. If you hover over it, you'll be able to see the login of the user who sent the message.

You can start a dialog with a contact through sending a WhatsApp message template in the available ways:

• in scenarios
• out off scenarios

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.

In addition to message texts, enKod handles incoming attachments from a contact:

• images (.png .jpg .jpg .jpeg .gif)
• documents (.pdf .msword)
• texts (.csv .html .xml)
• videos (.mpeg .mp4 .webm)
• voice messages

You will have access to:

• downloading files - it happens automatically by clicking on the cloud with any file other than an image
• viewing images - by clicking it opens to full screen. The image can be saved via right mouse click

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 attach files to the messages you send from Dialogs by clicking on the “paperclip”:

• images (.png, .jpg, .jpeg) up to 16MB
• documents (.pdf) up to 100MB

Files of other formats will not be displayed in Explorer. You can attach only 1 file per message. If you reattach a new file, the previous file will be overwritten by the new one.

You can send text along with a file:

• An image with text will be sent as 1 message
• A document with text will be sent as 2 consecutive messages (document ➔ text).

By clicking on the envelope, you can select and send one of the moderated WhatsApp message templates to the contact.

You can view the statistics of your WhatsApp channel:

• In the WhatsApp template details (Mailings ➔ 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 (Mailings ➔ Scenario messages ➔ Message details ➔ Statistics)

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

As the platform only integrates with WhatsApp and is not directly involved in its development and support, enKod cannot influence some processes from its side. You need to contact the technical support of 360dialog or WA Business Manager yourself. Below we will tell you about common issues and options for resolving them.

1. Use only your own number bases, don't waste money;
2. Segment your audience (for example, with RFM-analysis) and send only relevant and personalized offers;
3. Make the beginning of each message catchy - one that makes a person want to open the mailing. Remember that the recipient only sees the very beginning of the message in notifications.
4. Add buttons to your messages - don't force the recipient to send numbers or whole phrases in response;
5. Write short messages to fit on the screen (up to 500 characters) - this increases conversion in response;
6. Send mailings no more than 2-3 times a week, don't bore your audience;
7. Use re-touches: send additional messages to those who did not respond to your mailing;
8. Constantly test, analyze and improve your mailings.