Messages in Telegram chatbots

You can send and receive messages in Telegram messenger chatbots, automate work with users using automatic messages or the API of the service.

It is allowed to use both their own bots and common service ones, which are used by all customers of our service.

Connecting to bots

To be able to receive or send messages to Telegram messenger users through a specific bot, it is necessary that they first connect this bot in their messenger application (subscribe to the bot). To do this, you can specify the name, link or QR code of the required bot in your service or send information about it in another way, for example, by SMS.

For all bots registered in the system, the service will automatically monitor user connections and disconnections to bots, maintain and update the database of all subscribers to be able to send them messages and receive responses.

Messages sending

You can send messages to users connected to the bot by name (@username), by ID (#uid) , or 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 It can automatically forward such undelivered messages by SMS when a special option is enabled.

Common Service bots

The SMS bot

Bot's name: @smsc_bot.

A bot for testing and sending any service messages. Promotional messages and mass mailings are not allowed and will be blocked.

Bot SMSС.INFO

Bot names: @smscinfo_bot, @smsinform_bot.

A bot for sending any service and information messages. Promotional messages and mass mailings are not allowed and will be blocked.

Bot SMSC.CODE

Bot names: @smsccode_bot, @smsc_code_bot, @smscodes_bot.

This bot is designed to receive access codes and confirmations in online services. Sending codes through this bot is a cheap alternative to sending SMS messages..
Detailed description of the SMSC.CODE bot "

SMS.PING bot

Bot's name: @smscping_bot.

This bot is used to send notifications about the status of servers from the server monitoring service. You can also send service messages from your servers via this bot using API requests.

Custom Bots

In addition to using common service bots, you can also register your bots in the service and send messages via 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 from services of other clients. Reconnect to the next one every time messenger users may not like the bot, 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

Despite the many advantages of using Telegram bots to send messages to users, this method has several obvious disadvantages compared to sending SMS:

• 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.

Thus, in order to avoid possible inconveniences when sending messages to the bot, it is also advisable to provide customers of your service with the opportunity to choose another way of sending messages, for example, via SMS, for more guaranteed information delivery.

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.