Channels: email, Telegram, SMS and Meta

Besides the widget on your website, messages can also come in by other routes. Every channel lands in the same agent desk as the chat, and your team answers there; the reply goes back through the same channel.

Important – current state: the channels are built and tested against simulated counterparts, but not yet tried out with a real mailbox, bot or provider account. The channels page says so itself. So test a channel thoroughly before you tell your customers about it.

Where you set up channels

You set up email, Telegram and SMS per project: under /app/projects/…/channels (Channels), also reachable from the integrations page with Set up channels. For this you need the right to manage integrations (owners and admins).

Every channel has the same controls:

• Turn on this channel
• AI assistant answers in this channel on its own – off by default for email, on by default for Telegram and SMS
• Save, Test connection (the test sends nothing, it only signs in) and Remove channel
• a state: not set up, on, off, test passed, error or not tested yet, plus when it was last checked and fetched

For secret fields such as passwords: leaving them empty means unchanged. Credentials are stored encrypted.

Email

reactive.chat fetches mail from a mailbox you already have and sends your team's replies back as mail. There is no separate forwarding address at reactive.chat.

You enter:

• Mailbox address and Sender name
• Incoming (IMAP) – server, port (993 or 143), encryption (SSL/TLS or STARTTLS), user name, password
• Outgoing (SMTP) – the same details, ports 465, 587, 25 or 2525. If you leave outgoing empty, replies go out via reactive.chat's own sending, with your address as the reply-to address. With your own server, SPF and DKIM are right, and the reply also lands in your “Sent” folder.
• Mark fetched mails as read in the mailbox – if you wish

Only names are allowed as servers, no IP addresses.

How fetching works:

• New mails are fetched from the inbox every minute, and only mails that arrive after the channel is switched on.
• If a customer replies to an earlier mail, it lands in the same conversation up to 30 days later.
• Out-of-office notes, delivery reports, mailing lists, mails marked as spam and your own mails are not taken over.
• Attachments come along if they are images, PDF, text or CSV and fit within the limits of your plan. Otherwise the conversation shows “[Attachment not accepted: …]”, in the project's default language.
• Against floods there are upper limits per sender and per project and hour.

Switching on the AI assistant for email is deliberately a decision of its own: with mail there is a risk of loops with automatic replies and long quotes. The assistant's replies are labelled as automatic replies.

Telegram

In Telegram, create a bot of its own for this project via @BotFather with /newbot and enter the Bot token. reactive.chat registers the callback address with Telegram itself when you save.

• Only private chats with the bot become conversations, groups do not.
• Texts up to 4096 characters, files up to 15 MB.
• Use a different bot from the one you may be using for team notifications via the Telegram integration.

SMS

For SMS you need an account of your own with Twilio, which you first connect as an integration in the workspace. After that you enter the Twilio number of this project in the channel (format +44…) and, in Twilio under “A message comes in”, the address the channels page shows.

• Text only. Images from MMS are announced but not taken over.
• Long replies are split over at most 3 SMS with up to 1600 characters in total.

WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and Instagram

You do not set these three up on the channels page, but as an integration in the workspace (/app/integrations). You need an app of your own at Meta for this and enter its credentials; the integrations page shows the callback address for Meta.

The platforms' rules apply:

• WhatsApp – you can reply freely as long as the customer's last message is at most 24 hours old. After that, only a template approved by Meta can be sent.
• Instagram – the customer has to write first.
• Messenger – replies outside the standard window are only possible as a reply from a person on the team.

These connections are built against recorded responses and have not yet been tested with a real Meta account.

For WhatsApp there are also broadcasts to contacts with documented consent; see Availability, callbacks and notifications.

What is different in the desk

• In the reports you can filter by channel, and in the automation the channel can trigger an assignment rule.
• Long replies are shortened or split to fit the channel's limits.
• Commands such as /buttons, /form or /cards are made for the widget. For other channels you are best off writing plain text.
• You can link the same person's conversations from different channels with proof; see The agent desk.

Known gap

If delivering a reply through a channel finally fails, this is currently not shown in the conversation. In the desk the reply then looks delivered. So after setting up, check with a real test message in both directions.

If a channel has been switched off for your project by the operator, the channels page says so; your settings are kept.