Conversation Participants

A participant can send and receive messages in a conversation. There are different types of participants. Depending on the type, the meaning of the participant ID changes:

Participant type
Description
Meaning of participant ID

accessKey

A Bird API access key. This is what you'll commonly use when sending messages through the Conversations API

Access key ID

user

A user belonging to your workspace. This will typically represent customer service agents.

User ID

contact

A contact. This represents your customer, lead, or end-user.

Contact ID

flow

A Bird flow

Flow ID

bot

An AI LLM bot

Bot ID

connector

A campaign message

Connector ID

channel

Used by instagram echo messages

Channel ID

collaborationAutomation

Actions automatically executed by Action Rules

Action Rule ID

Identifier Keys and Values

In Bird, a message recipient is identified by an "identifier key" and "identifier value" pair which depend on the platform of the channel being used:

  • In an email channel, identifierKey is emailaddress and identifierValue is the email address of the recipient, e.g. john.doe@example.com

  • In WhatsApp, RCS, SMS, and Viber, identifierKey is phonenumber and identifierValue is the phone number with an international call prefix, such as +31612345678

  • Remaining channels have custom identifierKey and identifierValue formats that can be extracted from messages after an initial user interaction:

    • In Facebook, an example identifier key is facebookid-164849000012345 and an example identifier value is 720197540012345

    • In Apple Business Chat, an example identifier key is applebc-c72f4be3-2773-4ad4-86cf-6a6b4b3cb837 and an example identifier value is urn:mbid:c29tZSByYW5kb20gYmFzZTY0IGNvbnRlbnQ=

Some APIs allow you to refer to a conversation participant in two ways, either by specifying their participant ID, or by specifying their identifier key and identifier value pair.

API Reference Guide

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