Your salon's own Telegram bot - connecting it step by step

Reminders to clients work in BeeSection from day one and need nothing connected: our own bot sends them. Your own bot is a different job. You need it when the salon wants to have conversations with clients in Telegram under its own name, and keep those conversations in the CRM rather than on somebody's personal phone.

If you came here for client reminders, you do not need this - there is a separate article about the two bots. If you came for chats and campaigns under the salon's name, read on; it takes ten minutes.

Step 1. Create the bot in BotFather

1. Open a chat with @BotFather in Telegram - the official Telegram bot for creating bots.
2. Send the command /newbot.
3. Enter the display name - the one clients will see: "Beauty Line Salon".
4. Enter the username - Latin letters, and it must end in bot: beautyline_salon_bot. If it is taken, BotFather asks for another.
5. You get back a token - a long string like 7788899911:AAH.... It is the bot's password: whoever has it is the bot.

While you are there it is worth setting the avatar and description (/setuserpic, /setdescription) - that is what the client sees before the first message.

Step 2. Paste the token into the CRM

1. Settings - Integrations, find Telegram.
2. Paste the token into the Bot token field.
3. Press Test connection. The test asks Telegram whose token this is and returns the bot's name. An error here means the token was copied incompletely or has already been revoked.
4. Switch the integration on.

There is no separate field for the bot's username - we ask Telegram for it so that it cannot drift out of line with reality.

The webhook sets itself up when you switch the integration on: the address Telegram will post messages to and the secret key are created for you. If something goes wrong, the section has "Set up webhook", "Check webhook" and "Bot info" buttons - the last one shows what Telegram thinks of your setup.

Once saved, the token is masked: only its last four characters are visible. If it leaks, revoke it in BotFather with /revoke, get a new one and paste it again.

Step 3. The auto reply

The auto reply is on by default: a client who writes to the bot first gets an answer rather than silence. The text can be changed, the client's name can be substituted into it, and the format is plain text with Telegram markup. If the markup is wrong the settings will not save - Telegram would not render broken markup at all, and you would have heard about it from a client.

What the bot does once connected

• Client chats. Messages arrive in the chats section and attach to the client card; the conversation belongs to the client, not to an administrator's device. The chats section is part of the Salon plan.
• A reminder channel. Your own bot can be added to the list of reminder channels, so the client gets the reminder from your salon rather than from our bot.
• Campaigns. Telegram comes first in the campaign channel cascade, and your own bot is what that means.
• Staff notifications. An employee links their own Telegram to the bot with a one-time code: the link lives for 15 minutes and burns on use. After that they receive notifications according to the rules you set.
• Document notifications. If you use the document flow, document events also go through the salon's bot.
• Lead source. A request from the bot is tagged with its source, so reports show how many clients came from Telegram.

Security

Telegram posts messages to an address only we and it know. Every request carries a secret key created when you connected, and a request without the right key is dropped. Older integrations that have no key yet are checked by Telegram's server addresses instead - but the key is stronger, and it is worth creating with the "Set up webhook" button.

If the bot stays silent

• Test the connection. A failing test means the token, not the bot.
• Look at "Webhook info". An empty address means Telegram does not know where to post messages: press "Set up webhook".
• Write to the bot yourself from your own phone. The message should appear in chats within seconds.
• Check that a client has not blocked the bot. Telegram delivers nothing to a blocked bot, and that is not something we can configure.