Using Flow Builder to send WhatsApp messages

Flow Builder allows you to configure all actions with respect to the WhatsApp channel including rich capabilities like reply buttons, list messages, and template messages.

How does this step benefit you?

The “Send WhatsApp Message” step allows you to maximize the customization of your messages to your users. It provides interactive features that allow end-users to swiftly select through options instead of typing text when replying to a conversation.

Before getting started

You will need:

How to configure the step

Step 1: Log in to your MessageBird Dashboard and navigate to Flow Builder.

Step 2: Create a new flow or choose an existing flow. If you selected a new flow please choose a trigger that applies to you and an available channel.

Step 3: Add a step “Send WhatsApp Message”.

The components of the step are Send Settings, Message Settings, Response Settings, and Advanced Settings:

Send Settings

Here you are able to configure how the message will be sent, either as a reply back to the current conversion, from a different channel, or in a specific conversation.

Message Settings

There are five available message types: text, media, interactive, product and template.

Text

You are able to modify the message content:

Media

You are able to modify:

the media type
the URL to the media
the caption of the media

Interactive

You are able to modify:

The type of interactive content: Reply Buttons (max. of 3 buttons) or a List (max. of 10 list items)
Message content, including header, body, and footer:

Define the reply buttons

or the list items:

Product

You are able to modify:

the type of product message:
- Single Product Message: Messages with a single product item from a business inventory
- Multi-product Message: Messages containing up to 30 items from a business inventory
Messages body, footer, and the text of the call-to-action button:
- The call-to-action button is shown underneath the message. If your customers click on it, it will take them to your product catalog. You are able to modify the text that will be shown on that button.

For this step to work, we'll need you to add the Catalogue ID and the Product Retail ID. The two enable us to fetch the needed information on the product/products from the Meta Commerce Manager. A general guide on how to add products in the Meta Commerce Manager can be found here.

Template

You are able to:

Choose the template you would like to use, out of your approved ones in the Template Manager
Modify the templates header (supported types are: plain text including variables, image, video, and document)
the variables in the body
and the footer of the template (only plain text is supported in the footer):

Response settings

When enabled, response settings allow for an automatic configuration of the branching in interactive messages such as the reply buttons and lists. At the same time, you can also configure the Wait for response section:

the step would wait for an end-user to respond to it for a predefined ‘x’ amount of time.
If there is no response within that time the user would move to the next step in the flow automatically.

You could also configure a separate expired case from the same section.

Advanced Settings

Available advanced settings are:

Status reports enablement: sending reports on the status of the message sent it the step via a GET request to a URL provided
TrackID enablement: when filled out, the trackID will be sent as a parameter in the messages, allowing you to track insights such as read, delivered, failed or rejected using the reporting API

Step 4: Configure the message as per your choice in the message settings section of the Send WhatsApp Message step.

Shared below is an example message that’s configured using an interactive message with Response settings where branching is enabled.

Step 5: Build out your flow with the combination of several Send Whatsapp Message steps as per your use case and don’t forget to Save and Publish the Flow. Here is an example of what it would look like for your end-user: