Telegram

What the Telegram channel is

Telegram exposes its business-messaging surface through the Bot API. Every bot is created and managed through BotFather — Telegram's official bot-creation bot, reachable at @BotFather inside any Telegram app. When you create a bot you get a bot username ending in bot (e.g. @MyShop_bot) and a bot token that authenticates every API call. A few things are worth knowing up front:

• Token authentication, not OAuth. You paste one secret string. There's no redirect to Telegram, no permission screen, no Meta Business Portfolio to authorize — a genuine difference from the WhatsApp / Facebook / Instagram flow.
• The bot token is the bot's password. Anyone who has it can read every message sent to the bot, send messages as the bot, and change its settings. Treat it like a production secret.
• Users must message the bot first. A bot cannot start a conversation with someone who has never sent it a message (usually by tapping /start). This is Telegram's anti-spam guarantee.
• No 24-hour window. Once a user has messaged your bot, the Clone can reply any time — days or weeks later — with no templates and no window-expiry failure. See There's no 24-hour window.

You add Telegram from the Connections page. Once active, it shows up there as a row identified by the bot username (shown as "Telegram · @your_bot"), and incoming bot messages appear in the Messages surface tagged with the channel.

Create a bot with BotFather

Before you can connect anything, you need a bot and its token. You create both inside Telegram by chatting with BotFather — no website, no dashboard. If you already have a bot and its token, skip to Connecting the bot.

1. Open BotFather in Telegram

   In the Telegram app (mobile, desktop, or web), search for @BotFather and open the chat. Tap Start if this is your first time.

   Heads up

   Make sure the account has the verified blue checkmark next to @BotFather — phishing copycats exist. Never paste a token into anything that isn't the real BotFather.

2. Send /newbot

   Send the command /newbot. BotFather asks for the bot's display name — the name users see in their chat list (e.g. MyShop Assistant). Send it.

3. Choose a username

   BotFather then asks for a username. It must be globally unique on Telegram and must end in bot (e.g. MyShop_Assistant_bot). If the one you want is taken, BotFather asks for another.

4. Copy the bot token

   BotFather confirms the bot is created and shows the token — a long string like 123456789:AAH1abcde-FGH… (a numeric prefix, a colon, then an alphanumeric secret). Copy the whole thing, both parts including the colon.

   Heads up

   Treat the token like a password. Don't screenshot it, don't paste it into chat, and never commit it to a code repository — GitHub and other secret scanners detect Telegram bot tokens automatically. If it ever leaks, rotate it (see the FAQ below).

5. Set the bot's profile (optional)

   While you're in BotFather you can send /mybots → pick your bot → Bot Settings to add a Description (shown in the empty-chat state), an About tagline, and a Profile photo (e.g. your logo). All optional, all changeable later, and none of them block connecting to IcloneU.

Connecting the bot

With the token copied, the IcloneU side takes about a minute. The one thing to understand is that it's a two-step check: Check token confirms the token is valid and tells you which bot it belongs to, then Connect registers IcloneU's webhook with Telegram and creates the Connection.

1. Start a new Telegram connection

   Open Connections in the left sidebar, click New connection, and pick Telegram. The Connect Telegram Bot dialog opens, explaining "You're about to connect your Telegram bot to the IcloneU application." It also carries a help link — "Need help creating a bot?" → "See the Telegram Bot Guide" — pointing back to bot creation.

2. Paste the bot token

   Paste the full token into the field labelled "Enter your Telegram bot token…" — both parts, including the colon (e.g. 123456789:AAH1abc…).

   Heads up

   Do this on a trusted device. Treat the token paste exactly like a password paste — close the dialog before you step away.

3. Check the token

   Click Check token. IcloneU validates the token and resolves the bot, then confirms verbatim: "The token you entered is valid, and it belongs to the bot <bot_username>. Would you like IcloneU to connect to this bot?" This is your chance to confirm you pasted the right bot's token before committing.

4. Connect

   Click Connect. IcloneU registers a webhook for incoming messages and creates the Connection immediately. The per-Connection settings panel ("Account options for <bot>") opens automatically, with your existing Clone auto-selected in the Clone dropdown.

After connecting, the Telegram Connection appears on the Connections page identified by the bot username with an active status indicator. Verify it worked by messaging the bot from a Telegram account and watching the message land in the Messages surface within seconds.

Attaching a Clone and enabling it

Connecting the bot registers the pipeline, but the bot won't answer substantive questions until a Clone is attached and saved. The settings panel opened automatically right after Connect; you can reopen it any time by selecting the Connection row.

1. Pick the Clone

   In the settings panel, choose the Clone from the Clone dropdown — "The clone that will reply on behalf of this integration." IcloneU auto-selects your existing Clone here, but confirm it's the one you want.

2. Check that it's Enabled

   The Enabled toggle controls whether the bot answers at all — "When off, incoming messages and comments for this account are ignored. Tokens are kept so you can re-enable without reconnecting." Leave it on.

3. Save

   Click Save. This is the step that makes the Clone attachment stick.

   Heads up

   You must click Save. If you close the panel with Cancel, the auto-selected Clone is discarded and no Clone is attached — the bot stays silent on real questions until you reopen the panel, pick a Clone, and Save.

For the full attach-and-enable walkthrough that applies across every channel — including Reply timing and how Clones and Connections relate — see Assigning a Clone to a platform.

There's no 24-hour window

The Meta channels (WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Instagram) enforce a 24-hour conversational window: after a customer's last message you have 24 hours to reply freely, then you need an approved template. Telegram has none of this. Once a user has messaged your bot at least once, the Clone can reply at any time — days, weeks, or months later — until the user blocks the bot.

• No templates and no message tags. You don't author Utility / Marketing templates or submit anything for Telegram approval — you just reply.
• No out-of-window failure. A customer who last messaged the bot a year ago can be replied to today; the send succeeds.
• The first-contact rule is strict. No bot, integration, or third-party shortcut lets you message a Telegram user who has never opened a chat with the bot. The Meta-style "send to a phone number" pattern doesn't exist here.
• User blocks are final until the user unblocks. If a user blocks the bot, there's no API-side way to resume — they have to unblock from their own Telegram client.

Troubleshooting

When a Telegram bot goes quiet, start by checking whether the customer's inbound message reached IcloneU: open the Messages surface and search for the chat. Where the message stops tells you which half of the pipeline to fix.

The inbound never reaches IcloneU. That points at first-contact, the token, or the webhook:

• The user never sent /start — a bot can't message someone who hasn't messaged it first. Have them open t.me/<your_bot> and tap Start. After that the bot can reply any time.
• The token IcloneU has is stale — if someone rotated the token at BotFather, IcloneU is using an invalid one and stops receiving updates. In BotFather send /token, pick the bot, and compare against what IcloneU has; if they differ, re-enter the new token.
• Another tool claimed the webhook — Telegram allows one webhook per bot, so a second integration silently steals the updates. Disconnect and reconnect the IcloneU Connection to re-register its webhook.

The inbound appears in Messages but the Clone doesn't reply. That's an outbound-side issue:

• No Clone attached, or the panel was closed with Cancel — reopen the Connection's settings, confirm a Clone is selected and Enabled is on, and click Save.
• That one user blocked the bot — if only a single user gets no reply while others do, they've likely blocked the bot. There's no fix from your side; they have to unblock.
• The rate cap fired — if the bot was reply-flooding and then went silent, it may be hitting the 30/second-across-users or 1/second-per-chat limit and getting HTTP 429s.
• Knowledge configuration — the same as any channel, "Answer from library only" with no matching content (or strictness set too tight) can silence otherwise-valid replies.

If you've worked through all of the above and a fresh test message from a different Telegram account still doesn't get a reply, escalate to support with the bot username, the test user's @handle, the timestamp of an inbound that didn't surface, whether it's a 1:1 or group chat, and screenshots of the Connections page and the Messages surface.

Frequently asked