Channels

A channel is an account your customers write to. Once it is connected, every message on it arrives in Conversations, becomes a contact and opens a deal. This page covers every channel except WhatsApp, which has its own guide: WhatsApp.

Before you start

• Only owners and administrators can add or change channels.
• Each channel needs its feature in your plan. A channel your plan does not include shows Not in your package.

• Your plan sets how many channels can be on at once (Connected channels). The limit is checked when you add a channel and when you turn one back on. The test channel does not count.
• You need at least one pipeline, because new deals from a channel start in a stage you choose. Without one the page shows Create your first pipeline to start tracking deals. See Deals and pipelines.

Settings every channel shares

1. Open Conversations, then select Channels.
2. Under Add channel, open Connect … for the channel you want.
3. Fill in the fields below, then the fields for that channel, and select Add channel.

Balanced assignment picks among active members who can reply, the one with the fewest open conversations. A fixed owner, and then the contact's own owner, always come first.

Secrets you enter (tokens and app secrets) are stored encrypted and never shown again. A channel cannot be deleted: select Turn off to stop it, and Turn on to start it again. The page shows your first 20 channels.

The AI agent is turned on and off for each channel on the Assistant page. Turning it off for a channel hands the conversations it was answering there back to your team at once. See AI agent.

Messenger and Instagram

If the platform has set up a Facebook app, you see Connect with Facebook. Select it, sign in to Facebook, allow access, then pick the page, choose Messenger or Instagram, choose the stage and select Add channel. Instagram needs a professional account linked to that page.

Without that button, connect by hand with your own Meta app:

1. Open Connect Messenger or Connect Instagram.
2. Enter the Facebook Page ID or the Instagram account ID, the page Access token and your app's App secret.
3. Select Add channel.
4. On the new channel's card, copy the Webhook address and the Verify token into the webhook settings of your Meta app, and subscribe it to messages.

Messages the page sends itself are ignored, so your own replies are not counted twice. Customer names are not fetched from Meta: a new contact is named after the channel and the last digits of the sender's ID until you rename it.

Telegram

1. Create a bot with BotFather in Telegram and copy its token.
2. Open Connect Telegram, paste it in Bot token and select Add channel.

The connection is made automatically and the card shows Connected to Telegram automatically. Only private chats with the bot are taken in; groups are ignored. If Telegram refuses, you see an error and the channel is saved switched off. Check the token, then select Turn on.

Text messages

Text messages run through your own Twilio account.

1. Open Connect Text messages.
2. Enter Twilio number, digits only, the Account SID and the Auth token.
3. Select Add channel.
4. Copy the Webhook address from the card into the incoming-message setting of that number in Twilio.

Customers are matched to existing contacts by phone number. Text messages carry text only.

Website chat

Website chat adds a Chat with us button to your site.

1. Open Connect Website chat.
2. Enter your Website domain, for example example.com. The chat works on that domain and its subdomains only.
3. Optionally write a Greeting, up to 300 characters. It is shown when a visitor opens the chat.
4. Select Add channel.
5. Copy the line shown under Add this line to your website, before the closing body tag and paste it into every page where the button should appear.

What visitors and your team should know:

• Visitors may give a name and email. Both are optional. An email typed into the chat never links the visitor to an existing contact, because anyone could type a customer's address. A new contact is created, and your team merges the two once they are sure. A typed email is also kept out of marketing.
• A visitor writes up to 2,000 characters a message and sees the latest 50 messages. Replies appear within about five seconds while the chat window is open.
• Limits against flooding: 20 messages a minute for each visitor, 30 new conversations a minute and 1,000 a day for each channel, and 5 new conversations in 10 minutes from one internet address. When your company has reached its contact limit, the chat stops starting new conversations.
• If your site sets a Content Security Policy, allow https://rutbacrm.com in its script-src and connect-src rules.
• The chat stops completely if Website chat leaves your plan, because the button disappears from your site.

The test channel

On test installations you can add a Test channel. It needs no plan feature and is never available on the live service. Its card has Simulate incoming message: enter From number, an optional Name and the Message, and the message arrives in the inbox as if a customer sent it. Nothing leaves the system.

Troubleshooting