The Telegram integration enables you to connect your Telegram bot to LiveAgent. The integration allows your support team to receive and reply to messages sent to the bot from the LiveAgent panel directly. It is required to have a Telegram bot, regular Telegram accounts cannot be integrated.
Creating a Telegram bot
To create a Telegram bot and get an API token for connecting it to LiveAgent, it is required to contact @BotFather bot on Telegram. For a detailed step-by-step guide, please refer to this article.
See also the A General Bot Platform Overview and Detailed Guide to Bot Features Telegram articles for more information about bots.
Integrating Telegram bot with LiveAgent
To integrate your bot, navigate in your LiveAgent panel to Configuration > Telegram > Telegram accounts and click on the "Add bot" button.
If you can't find the Telegram accounts section, ensure that the integration is enabled in the Configuration > Telegram.
In the connection form window, enter the bot's name, its internal description, and its API token. Select the department in which Telegram messages should create tickets, and click "Save".
The API token can be found in the BotFather's confirmation message about new bot creation. Alternatively, you can retrieve the API token of your bot by sending the /mybots command to the BotFather, select the desired bot, and click "API token".
That's it. Your Telegram bot is now successfully connected and you can start receiving messages sent to the bot in LiveAgent.
Promoting your bot
To enable your customers to contact you via Telegram, add a link or a button that opens your Telegram bot in the app on your website. To do this, use a link to https://t.me/{BotUsername}. Do not forget to replace the {BotUsername} with the username of your bot which you set during creation of the bot, e.g. https://t.me/MyCompanyBot. See our basic examples in this article.
<a href="https://t.me/MyCompanyBot">Contact us via Telegram</a>
Alternatively, customers can also find your bot by searching for its username, e.g. @MyCompanyBot, in the Telegram app.