Telegram

Connect a Telegram bot with its token so an agent answers your customers on Telegram.

Connect a Telegram bot to Shortext and an agent answers the customers who write to it. You create the bot yourself with ＠BotFather, Telegram’s official bot, then give its token to Shortext: there is no page to log in to, the token is enough.

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Connect a bot

1. Create the bot with ＠BotFather

   In Telegram, open ＠BotFather, send /newbot and choose a name and a username for your bot (it must end with bot, for example AcmeSupportBot).

   ＠BotFather answers with the bot’s token, in the form 123456789:AA.... Copy it.

   The token gives full control of the bot. Do not share it outside Shortext.
2. Add the bot to Shortext

   Open Communication > Channels > Telegram, create a bot and paste the token.

3. Choose the agent

   Choose the agent that answers on this bot. You can change it at any time.

4. Save

   Shortext checks the token with Telegram and the bot starts receiving messages at once.

The token is encrypted and never shown again, in the dashboard or the API.

A bot can be connected only once. If the token is badly formed, refused by Telegram, or belongs to a bot that is already connected, the bot is not saved and the error says why.

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With the API

POST /channels/telegram connects a bot (Manage integrations permission):

{
  "bot_token": "123456789:AAH...",
  "name": "Acme support",
  "agent_id": "AGI-XXXXX",
  "enabled": true
}

Field	Description
bot_token	Required. The token given by ＠BotFather. Never returned.
name	Optional, an internal name. Default: the name of the bot.
agent_id	Optional, the agent answering on the bot; null leaves it detached.
enabled	Optional, true by default.

The response is the channel, as returned by GET /channels, with the id tga_... and these settings:

Setting	Description
username	The username of the bot, without @.
bot_url	The link to share with your customers, for example https://t.me/AcmeSupportBot.
receiving	true when the bot is enabled and Telegram delivers its messages.
last_error	The last refusal from Telegram, null when all is well.

A wrong, refused or already connected token is a validation error (1002) on bot_token.

PATCH /channels/telegram/{id} changes the fields you send, and DELETE /channels/telegram/{id} deletes the bot. List your bots with GET /channels?type=telegram, and attach or detach the agent with PUT and DELETE /channels/telegram/{id}/agent, as for the other channels.

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How customers reach you

On Telegram, the customer writes first: they open your bot and tap Start. A bot cannot write to someone who has never started it.

Share the link of your bot, https://t.me/<username>, on your website, your emails or a QR code. To know where a customer comes from, add ?start= followed by a code, for example https://t.me/AcmeSupportBot?start=website. The code is up to 64 characters: letters, digits, _ and -.

Once the customer has started the bot, you can write to them at any time: there is no 24-hour window and no template on Telegram.

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Contacts

A Telegram contact is identified by their Telegram user id. Telegram does not give their phone number or country, unless the customer chooses to share their number.

A customer who blocks the bot is unsubscribed. If they start the bot again, they are subscribed again.

Only private conversations with the bot are supported, not groups.

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Messages

Type	On Telegram
Text	Formatting is rendered: *bold*, _italic_, ~strikethrough~ and `code`.
Images, videos, documents	Sent and received.
Voice messages	Sent and received; the agent can answer with a voice message.
Stickers	Sent and received.
Locations	Sent and received; with a name and an address, a named place.
Contact cards	Sent: one number shown, the others in the card. A phone number shared by the customer is received.
Reply buttons and lists	Shown as buttons under the message. A tap comes back as a button reply.
Call to action, payment link	Shown as a link button under the message.

See Message format for the payloads.

Limits:

• 4,096 characters per message, 1,024 for a media caption;
• files received from customers up to 20 MB;
• about one message per second in each conversation.

Telegram sends no delivery or read receipts: a message accepted by Telegram is marked delivered.

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Billing

Each message sent on Telegram is billed at your company’s service rate (plus the AI reply beyond your plan), with no provider fee: Telegram charges nothing. See Balance and wallet movements.

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Disable or delete a bot

• Disable the bot to stop receiving messages; enable it again to resume. If you regenerate the token in ＠BotFather, update it in Shortext (PATCH with the new bot_token): only a token of the same bot is accepted.
• Delete it when you no longer need it. It is final: the bot stops receiving and its conversations leave the Inbox (they are kept for audits). The bot itself stays yours in ＠BotFather.