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. [e-mail]

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

• 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

1. Add participant to conversation
2. List participants
3. Get participant by ID
4. Get participant by identifier key and value
5. Update participant by ID
6. Update participant by identifier key and value
7. Delete participant
8. List participant conversations by ID
9. List participant conversations by identifier key and value