WhatsApp business account

With the WhatsApp Business Account integration, you can support tickets submitted from WhatsApp chats. This user guide explains how to integrate your WhatsApp Business Account(WABA) into the Sendbird Dashboard.

Note: Before getting started with integration, contact our Sales to enable the feature.

This page covers the following information:

• Preconditions for WABA integration
• Integrating your WABA
• Operation process
• Sending replies after 24 hours

To integrate your WhatsApp Business Account(WABA) into Sendbird Dashboard, you need to verify your WABA by signing up for the Vonage API dashboard and configure WABA related settings in both Sendbird and Vonage API dashboards since WhatsApp doesn't provide direct APIs to exchange messages.

Note: Vonage is one of the official WhatsApp business partners which provides communication APIs for WhatsApp business users. The pertaining charges will be incurred solely by the client contract with Vonage.

Sign up for the Vonage API dashboard and register your WABA there. In addition, the account-related information needs to be consistent between the two dashboards.

Sendbird Dashboard → Vonage API dashboard

• Webhook URL (Inbound URL and status URL)

Vonage API Dashboard → Sendbird dashboard

• API Key
• API Secret
• Application ID
• Signature secret
• WhatsApp phone number

1. In the Vonage API dashboard, go to Your applications.
2. Click Create a new application and turn on Messages.
3. Copy and paste Webhook URLs from the Sendbird dashboard.

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4. Click Link to link your WhatsApp number to your application. If there isn't any WhatsApp number on the list, contact Vonage's support team.

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5. Go to Settings and copy and paste Webhook URLs once more from the Sendbird dashboard.

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6. Copy the API Key, API Secret, and Application ID and paste them into the Sendbird dashboard.

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7. Click Verify your account.

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8. After the account verification, enter the signature secret and WhatsApp phone number.

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Note: Unlike other social media integration, you can register only 1 WABA per 1 Sendbird application.

After the successful integration of your business account, the messages and updates of their status are sent from WhatsApp to webhook URLs through Vonage APIs. Then Desk APIs retrieve and display those updates on the Sendbird Dashboard. When the Sendbird Dashboard sends messages or status updates to WhatsApp, the above process circles back.

According to WhatsApp policy, agents can respond to their customers with a free-form message up to 24 hours from the last message your customer sends. After 24 hours, only WhatsApp-approved message templates (MTM) are allowed to be sent to your customers. Create MTMs in the WhatsApp Manager, and use them in WhatsApp.

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Note: If you want to classify tickets from WhatsApp by assigning them only to a specific team, use Assignment rules.