Funnels in your personal Telegram: Telegram Business

How to make your bot's funnels work in your regular Telegram account, where clients write to your phone number, and reply on your behalf.

Normally Craft funnels run in the chat with your bot. If clients write to your personal Telegram account — by phone number or username — you can connect the bot to that account. The same funnels will then run right in your personal chats, and replies will come from you.

What you need#

• Telegram Premium on the account clients write to. Without it there is no "Telegram Business" section in settings.
• A bot connected to Craft with funnels on it.

How to connect#

1. Open @BotFather → /mybots → pick your bot → Bot Settings → Business Mode → Turn on.
2. In Telegram, on your account, open Settings → Telegram Business → Chatbots.
3. Enter the bot's username (for example, @mybot) and choose which chats it works in: all private chats, all except selected, or only selected.
4. Allow the bot to reply to messages.

That's it. Craft picks up the connection by itself — there's nothing to click in Craft. Once it's through, a green line "Works in your personal account" appears under the bot on the My accounts page. If the line is yellow — "without permission to reply" — go back to Telegram settings and allow the bot to reply to messages.

How it works#

• A funnel starts on a keyword, just like in the bot chat. A link to the bot and /start don't work in personal chats — they lead to the bot chat.
• Clients see funnel replies from you, in the same chat where they wrote to you.
• Your own messages don't start funnels: you can chat with a client yourself.
• If the client later writes to the bot itself, the funnel continues in the bot chat.
• These chats show up in "Dialogs" like any other. A reply from there reaches the client from you — within a day of their last message.

Good to know#

To disconnect the bot, go to the same place: Settings → Telegram Business → Chatbots. Replies will then go only in bot chats again.