How to use Telegram Business in chatbots
Chatbots operate separately from personal Telegram accounts, however, with SendPulse, Telegram Premium users can forward messages from their personal business accounts to SendPulse and automate their replies.
In this article, we will talk about how to receive messages from your personal business account in your chatbot and send flows.
Telegram Business features
Telegram Business users can connect chatbots to their personal account to interact with customers and synchronize messages in chatbots and personal chats. You can add a bot to your Telegram chats or launch chatbot flows on your own via private messages.
Telegram Business users will be able to respond in private messages using their bots, and these chats will not be any different for subscribers. This way, you can humanize customer communication while still automating it.
As a chatbot owner, you can link your bot to your personal Telegram account and select which chats the bot can access.
How to connect a chatbot to a personal Telegram account
This setup requires a SendPulse-powered chatbot and an active Telegram Premium subscription.
Configure your bot in BotFather
Log in to your Telegram account, and type in @BotFather in the search field. Enter the /mybots command, and select your bot. Click Bot Settings > Business mode.
In the latest Telegram version, you can access chatbot settings directly from your bot profile.
Select Turn Business mode on.
Set up a Telegram account
Telegram Business is not a standalone feature but one of the customer interaction tools available to Telegram Premium users. It allows them to create business accounts, bots, or channels.
In your Telegram account, go to Settings > Telegram Business > Chatbots.
In the input field, enter a username or a link to your bot, and when it appears in the dropdown list, click Add.
Select user groups to which your chatbot will have access.
| All 1-to-1 Chats | This option gives access to all contacts who send private messages. |
| Only Selected Chats | This option gives access only to certain contacts.
In the Included Chats section, add contacts or groups (new chats, saved or unsaved contacts). |
You can also limit access to certain contacts in the Excluded Chats section.
How to interact with subscribers
In live chats
Private messages from contacts added in the Telegram Business settings will appear in the Conversations section in SendPulse.
When a contact sends you a private message, SendPulse will start a new chat and create a new contact in your chatbot audience, even if this contact is your existing chatbot subscriber.
Afterward, you can interact with your subscribers in SendPulse live chats or reply as usual in private messages.
In the right panel of the Conversations section, under your subscriber’s username, you will see the personal Telegram account to which they messaged.
In Telegram, the upper panel will show to which chatbot this user is subscribed.
This chat will appear just like any other private chat to your subscriber.
If you want your chatbot to stop replying to this user, click Stop.
In flows
You can create a flow triggered by Telegram Business messages if you receive them in the SendPulse account linked to your chatbot.
You can run flows triggered by keywords. Go to your Telegram chatbot, and click Create new trigger. Select Messages for Telegram Business, enter keywords, and click Save.
Click Edit to go to the chatbot builder, and configure your flow with this trigger. Add more elements and save the flow.
Please note that you cannot add user input elements or quick replies.
You can also use the Filter element with the Business profile contact condition if you want to communicate only with subscribers who you have given access in your Telegram Business account settings.
We recommend disabling business auto-replies in Telegram to prevent potential issues with SendPulse. To do this, go to Settings > Telegram Business > Greeting Messages, and click Away Messages.
Last Updated: 03.09.2024
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