WhatsApp Business Chat API

Chat API provides the ability to connect users to WhatsApp Business API via WhatsApp API 360 Dialog provider.

For more information regarding connecting WhatsApp Business API via Chat API, pricing, documentation, and other questions, please visit  official Chat API portal.

 

How does the connection happen?

 

Schematically, the connection process can be depicted as follows:

1. Registration in Chat API;
2. Select the registration method in your personal Chat API cabinet and fill out the form for connecting WhatsApp Business API. You will be given two options - classic registration with deferred verification;

3. Subscribe to WhatsApp Business API with monthly charges;
4. Generate an API key in your personal 360 Dialog account;
5. Specify the API Key in your personal Chat API cabinet;
6. Approving message templates with Facebook;
7. Helping and receiving messages in WhatsApp Business API;
8. Connecting WhatsApp Business API to EddyDesk.

 

Connecting WhatsApp Business API to HelpDeskEddy

 

To add a channel to the system, go from the Management module to the "Channel settings" section and click the "Add Channel" button:

 

 

Select the "WhatsApp Business Chat API" channel and the Department that will receive requests:

 

 

 

Enter the name of the channel (optional), API URL and Token (you can copy them from your personal Chat API account):

 

 

 

 

After you click on the "Synchronize and Save" button, a "Connection successfully established" notification will be displayed. All messages that you will receive in your Whatsapp account will now be displayed in the system as requests.

 

To work with requests from a channel in the "Omnichannel" module, you additionally need to enable the displaying of requests from this channel. You can do it in the subsection "Omnichannel settings" of the module by checking the box "Display channels" next to the necessary channel:

 

 

Answers to frequently asked questions about connecting WABA can be found by the link, as well as from the Chat API support team.

 

Attention! Starting from 01.02.2022, WhatsApp Business API has a new message accounting system - Conversation model.

What has changed:

  • In the new system, not "Notifications" are paid accounting units, but the "Dialogue" itself between the client and the business. Both the dialogue initiated by the business and the customer will be considered paid. Let's note this again. There are no free incoming messages in the dialog system, all dialogs are paid, but dialogs initiated by customers are almost 2 times cheaper than dialogs initiated by the business;
  • The dialog free 24-hour rule has also changed. The 24 hours now begin to expire not with the last message, but with the first message from the client. The 24 hours are rigidly fixed. While it used to be theoretically possible to have endless free conversations with a client, having time to update the conditional timer with new messages within 24 hours, this has become impossible since February 2022.

Features:

  • Every first 1,000 conversations per month of one WhatsApp account are free. If you have more than one number in the same WhatsApp account, the dialogs will be distributed among them;
  • All incoming messages that were triggered by Click to WhatsApp "Call to Action" buttons from your promotions are free. It's important to note here that dialogs from Click to WhatsApp buttons will only be free if they are placed in ads through Facebook Business Manager. If you simply set up a "Send me" button with a switch to messenger, such a dialog will not be considered free.

 

Request channels