Deploying to Messenger

Answer the people who message your Facebook Page.

Prerequisites

  • A Facebook Page you administer
  • A published flow ready to deploy

There is no app to create and no credentials to copy. Connecting happens through Meta's own dialog, and everything it needs is handled for you.

Connect a Page

  1. Open your flow in the Flow Editor and click "Deployments"
  2. Choose Messenger as the platform, then click "Connect a Page"
  3. Meta opens its own window. Sign in, choose the Pages you want to connect, and approve the request
  4. When the window closes, the Page is connected and selected

Instagram comes with it

If the Page has an Instagram account linked to it, connecting the Page connects that too. They are separate accounts here, so you can run one flow on Messenger and a different one on Instagram, or deploy to only one of them. See the Instagram guide.

Whoever connects the Page has to be able to manage it at Meta. Choose every Page you want us to answer on while the dialog is open, since it is what decides which Pages we are given.

Create a Deployment

  1. Select the Page from the account list
  2. Give the deployment a name
  3. Choose a version strategy: Latest follows your newest published version, Pinned stays on one
  4. Create the deployment

A Page answers with one flow. Deploying a second flow to the same Page replaces the first rather than running both.

When You Can Reply

Meta limits when a business may message someone, and the limits differ for the bot and for a person answering from the inbox.

The first 24 hours

For 24 hours after a customer's last message, anything can be sent freely. This is where almost all of a conversation happens, and neither you nor the bot will notice a limit.

Up to seven days

After 24 hours the bot stops replying, and only a person may answer. When an agent replies in that window the inbox says so, because Meta allows it on the understanding that a human wrote it. Keep it a personal answer to that customer rather than marketing: sending a campaign this way is a policy violation, and it is your Page that carries the consequence.

After seven days

Nothing can be sent. The inbox will say so and stop you rather than let a reply fail silently. Internal notes are unaffected, so a conversation can still be worked on and closed.

Testing

  1. Open your Page on Facebook and send it a message from a personal account
  2. Your flow should answer
  3. The conversation appears in your inbox, where an agent can take over at any point

What a flow can send

  • Text replies
  • Quick replies for a small number of choices
  • A numbered list when there are more choices than buttons can carry, where the customer replies with a number

If the connection stops working

Removing our app at Meta, or Meta restricting the Page, stops messages reaching us. You will be told in the portal and by email rather than finding out from a customer.

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