Channels

An organization can manage several Telegram channels, and a single bot publishes to all of them. Each channel has its own message template, its own image template, its own queue, its own automatic publishing settings, its own default header and footer and, if you want, its own affiliate code. What is shared among all of them is the bot, the stores' credentials, the library of backgrounds and the preset texts.

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On this page

The essentials

  1. Paste your bot's token in Settings › Telegram and press Save: the connection is checked by itself.
  2. In Telegram, add the bot to your channel as an administrator, with the Post messages permission.
  3. In Settings › Channels, press Add channel.
  4. Paste the channel's link in Channel link, alias or ID and press Connect.
  5. When it says “The bot can post in this channel.”, press Save.

Telegram bot

In Settings › Telegram, the Telegram bot card stores the token of the bot that publishes your messages, in the Telegram bot token field. @BotFather gives it when creating the bot and it has the form 1234567890:ABCdefGHIjklMNOpqrsTUVwxyz. If you do not have a bot yet, how to create one is covered in First steps; one you already have works too.

Paste it exactly as @BotFather gives it to you. If what you pasted does not look like a token, the field tells you.

On saving, the bot's connection is checked, and Test connection, in the header, repeats it whenever you want: the answers are covered in Checking the connection. With the token checked, the card shows the bot's name and alias and an Open in Telegram button. How to remove it is covered in Changing or withdrawing credentials.

The token belongs to the organization, and only the owner enters this section.

The bot must be an administrator of each channel

A valid token is not enough to publish: the bot has to be an administrator, with permission to Post messages, in each channel. This section only answers whether the bot connects; whether it can publish in a particular channel is checked in Channels, when you create the channel and with Check permissions, which is where the fix is.

The control bot. Below, the Control bot card has the switch that turns the same bot into a reduced version of the application, to put offers together from the chat, govern the queue and receive the failure notices. It is the organization's, not each person's: turning it on turns it on for everybody who collaborates. Each person needs their Telegram account linked and to press Start in the chat: see Telegram bot.

When the token changes or is retired

If you save a different token, or retire the credentials, the control bot is invalidated and has to be switched on again.

Managing your channels

Everything is done from Settings › Channels, in the Your channels card.

  1. Your channels: one row per channel, with the handle to reorder them, its name and its alias.
  2. Check permissions asks Telegram whether the bot can publish in each one; Add channel creates another.
  3. Edit, archive and delete, on each channel's row.
  4. The help for registering a channel.

The first time you open Channels, a guided tour points out its parts. You can skip it, and start it again whenever you like from the button in the header, with Repeat the tour.

If you work in somebody else's organization

This section can be reached by the owner and the managers; an operator does not see it. The selector and the list show only the channels you have been assigned. Creating, archiving, restoring and deleting channels are reserved to the owner, so those buttons do not appear to you; editing, reordering and checking the permissions of the ones that already exist is yours. It is covered in Collaborators and permissions.

Creating a channel

Before anything else, the bot has to be connected: no channel can be checked without it.

Then add the bot to the channel, as an administrator, with the Post messages permission; it is the only one it needs. The window says so at the top, with the name of your bot.

Press Add channel, paste in Channel link, alias or ID something like https://t.me/my_channel, its @alias or its numeric ID, and press Connect (or Enter). The application asks Telegram, fills in the name, the ID and the alias, and tells you whether the bot can publish there:

  • “The bot can post in this channel.”
  • “The bot is an administrator but has no permission to post messages.”
  • “The bot is not an administrator of this channel.”
  • “The bot is not in this channel yet. Add it as an administrator.”

If you already have other channels, choose in Copy settings from which one to start from, and press Save.

If something fails when connecting
  • “Telegram cannot find that channel”: check the link or the alias and, if the channel is private, that the bot is already a member. Without the bot inside, a private channel cannot be registered.
  • An invitation link (t.me/+…) does not say which channel it belongs to: add the bot to the channel, forward any message from it to @userinfobot and paste the identifier it gives you.
  • A chat with a person is not accepted as a channel.
  • “You already have a channel with that ID”: that channel is already registered. If it is archived, it takes you to Archived channels so you can restore it.
Field Description
Channel link, alias or ID The only thing you need to paste. Connect uses it to obtain the next three fields. If you paste the numeric ID, it does not matter whether the -100 or only the sign is missing: Connect finds the right one.
Channel name How you will see it in the selector. It is not published. It is filled in with the channel's real name, and you can change it. If you connect another channel in the same window, the name is replaced unless you typed it yourself.
Channel ID The numeric ID that Telegram does not show. Telegram supplies it on connecting: it is seen and not typed.
Public alias The channel's @name, without the at sign. Telegram supplies it and it is not typed: it is filled in when the channel is connected and updated if it changes there. A private channel has none, and then it stays empty.
Copy settings from Only when creating. Copies from the channel you choose the message template, the image template, the queue settings, the automatic publishing settings and the default header and footer. Start from scratch starts from the factory settings.

If you already have all the channels of your plan, the Add channel button is disabled and the section says what to do, before you fill in anything: on the paid plans, archive or delete one or move to the plan that admits more; on the free one, delete the one you have, because that plan does not archive. There is also a cap on new channels a month: it is covered in Plan caps.

On the free plan — and during the free trial — the bot has to be an administrator already when the channel is registered, and the channels of one same Telegram person can only be in one organization (with a paid plan, in several). If that is not met, it tells you as soon as you look up the channel, before saving.

Checking that the bot can publish

On saving a channel it is checked by itself, and if the bot cannot post, we tell you right there. The Check permissions button asks again channel by channel and leaves the result in its row. The full sentence, with what to do, opens on hover or on a tap:

On the row What it means and what to do
Can post The bot can post in this channel. Nothing to do.
Not in the channel The bot is not in this channel, or the identifier is not one of its channels. Add it to the channel as an administrator, or correct the ID.
Not an administrator The bot is not an administrator of the channel. Add it as an administrator in Telegram.
No permission to post The bot is an administrator of the channel but has no permission to post messages. Turn on that specific permission; it is already an administrator.
Could not be checked A passing cut. Try again later.

With no bot connected, or with the token rejected, the button sends you first to fix that.

Each send also updates that result: if it fails because the bot is no longer in the channel, or cannot publish in it, the row says so and Home warns about it; and as soon as a message goes out again through that channel, the result switches by itself to Can post.

Editing a channel

Press in its row. The window, titled Edit and the channel's name, is the same as the one for creating, without the copy block: you can change the Channel name, and if you want to point to another Telegram channel, paste its link and press Connect again; the ID and the alias are filled in again by Telegram. On saving, the permissions check is repeated.

Channel with no ID

A channel that lacks its Telegram ID appears with the note “no ID” in the selector and with No ID, in red, in the list of channels. You can configure it, but it will not publish: neither manual sending, nor the queue, nor automatic publishing will take it into account until you fill in the field, and the screen reminds you with the Complete channel button.

What a channel does differently from the rest is configured where the general value is: the default header and footer in Settings › Message, and its own affiliate code in each store and in Affiliates: A different code per channel covers it.

Reordering the channels

Drag a channel by the icon to change its position and press Save in the header: until then the new order is not saved, and the card marks it with Unsaved. The order is the one you will see in the menu selector, in the multi-channel panel and in all the lists of channels. If you reach only some channels, reordering them moves only those: the others stay where they were.

Archiving a channel

Press Archive in the channel's row and confirm. It stops publishing — by hand and automatically —, leaves the selector and all the lists, and nothing is lost: it keeps its template, its image, its pending queue, its history and its profiles; its queue and its automatic publishing are left off. If it was the active channel, you move to the first one you have left.

The archive also has a cap, depending on the plan — it is covered in Plan caps. When it is full, the button is disabled and the section tells you to delete one of the archived ones. The free plan does not archive: to have another channel you have to delete the one you have or move to a paid plan.

Archived channels

Archived ones are listed apart, in Archived channels, with the reason for each: Archived by hand. or Archived because it did not fit the channels of your plan. (a plan downgrade archives what does not fit, starting with the most recently created, and never deletes).

Restoring one is your decision — the application never chooses it — with Restore, and it comes back with the queue and automatic publishing off, so that resuming them is your decision. There has to be room among your plan's channels, and the section says how many fit. An archived channel can also be deleted from that list.

Deleting a channel

Press Delete. The question says what is deleted with it: its message and image templates, the messages it has in the queue, its affiliate exceptions and the record of products already sent, queued or published. The search profiles that pointed only to that channel are left paused. If it was somebody's active channel, that person moves to the first one they have left.

Irreversible action

It cannot be undone. And deleting the record of what was already sent also deletes what prevents repeats: if you add the channel again, what was already sent may go out again. If you only want to stop publishing temporarily, archive the channel instead of deleting it.

Plan caps

Besides how many channels you can have at once, the plan caps how many you register each month and how many you keep archived. In parentheses, with all the additional channels the plan admits:

Plan New channels a month Archived channels
Free plan 3 0
Solo 3 (9 with 3 channels) 2 (6 with 3 channels)
Creador 9 (36 with 12 channels) 6 (24 with 12 channels)
Agencia 36 (300 with 100 channels) 24 (200 with 100 channels)

How many channels you have and how much is left of each cap is covered in Subscription and credits.

Fine print: how registrations and the archive are counted

Each additional channel purchased brings two more places in the archive. The cap on new channels a month is the sum of the channels and the archived ones your plan admits, and never fewer than three.

If you register a channel by mistake and delete it without ever having published in it and within the same month, that registration does not count against you. Restoring an archived channel does not count either: it already counted when you registered it.

The active channel selector

The active channel selector lives in the side menu: it is the Active channel block, with the name of the chosen channel. In a narrow window or on a phone, where the menu waits off-screen, you see it on opening the menu.

With a single channel it does not appear: there is nothing to choose between and that channel is always the active one. It shows up as soon as you create the second.

The channel you choose there is the active channel, and it is the one these work on:

Changing channel reloads the page you are looking at with the new channel's settings; if you had unsaved changes, it asks you first. The choice is remembered between sessions, per person and per organization.

To send an offer to several channels at once you do not need to change the active channel: it is covered in The multi-channel panel, in Create offer.

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