Connecting to bots
Messages sending
You can send messages to users connected to the bot:
By name (@username)
By ID (#uid)
By phone number, if the user provides the bot with his phone number
The service will find the corresponding user IDs in the subscriber database and send requests to the Telegram server, as well as receive messages from users with the possibility of automatic responses according to the specified rules. When sending auto-replies, the service can automatically translate them into the user's language
Sending messages to chatbots is possible through your personal account or from your programs through the API of the service, like regular SMS, with the same set of functionality, but at separate rates. All sent and received messages in bots are displayed in your personal account in the "History" section. When sending messages to unregistered users for a particular bot, such messages will be marked with a certain status, and money will not be debited for them. In addition, the system can automatically forward such undelivered messages by SMS when a special option is enabled
Common Service bots
Custom Bots
In addition to using common service bots, you can also register your bots in the service and send messages through them, receive responses from users and set up auto-replies
But messenger users who want to receive your messages will have to connect to your chatbot separately, although they could already be connected to our common bot thanks to the services of other clients. Messenger users may not like reconnecting to another bot every time, and they may refuse to connect to this method of receiving codes, which means they will have to use other less convenient or expensive methods. In addition, when using one common bot by all services, the subscriber base with matching their numbers to messenger accounts will grow faster, and user trust in the bot will be higher
The more subscribers the bots have, the more messages it will be possible to send through it to all online services. Also, when using shared bots, users will not have their contact list clogged with different bots.
Disadvantages of using bots
The need to pre-connect to the bot for each user independently, without which it is impossible to send messages to them. But this requirement eliminates the sending of mass and unwanted messages (spam) and increases user loyalty to this notification method. At any time, the user can disconnect from the bot and stop receiving messages through it.;
To be able to receive messages, it is necessary to have an Internet connection, which is not always available. Internet is not required to deliver SMS messages, it is enough to have a GSM signal and even in roaming. But in any case , the message sent to the bot will be delivered when the user has an Internet connection. Also, those users who request a confirmation code from an online service are already connected to the Internet;
Dependence on possible changes in the rules of the messenger for working with bots, prohibition of sending certain types of messages, blocking bots. But so far there has been no information about such real cases, and the messenger itself should benefit from the fact that users, thanks to bots, use their application more often;
When the messenger user changes the phone number, messages sent to the bot to the old number will continue to be delivered for some time until the user sends his new number to the bot on his own, or the service again requires confirmation of the number, which can be performed with a certain configurable frequency. But in most cases, users will be interested in updating their phone number in the bot as early as possible in order to receive messages from different services;
At the moment, the Telegram API for bots does not have the ability to determine the fact of actual delivery or reading of sent messages. All messages that are successfully accepted for sending by the messenger server are considered delivered, since only the existence of a subscriber for a given bot is checked, and if the user has an Internet connection, the sent message is guaranteed to come to him in the messenger. The fact of reading can be determined by passing a special unique link in the message text to receive information from the site, then clicking on the link will be recorded by the service and confirm the reading of the message
API
Our service provides special API commands for automated transmission of messages via telegram bots from customer services, similar to sending other types of messages. The API allows you to send messages to bots, and can also send information about receiving messages from users to your handler
For a description, see the API section "Sending a message to the Telegram chatbot"
