Telegram bot
The control bot is the reduced version of the application inside Telegram. With the same bot that already publishes to the organization's channels you can put an offer together from your phone, send it to the channel or to the queue, and hear about failures without opening the web.
On this page
The essentials
- The owner saves the bot's token in Settings › Telegram and turns on the switch of the Control bot card.
- Each person links their Telegram account in My account, under Linked accounts.
- Press Open the chat and, once in Telegram, Start.
- Send it a product link and press Publish or To the queue.
The bot is the organization's: the owner switches it on once, and from then on it serves everyone who works in it at the same time, each in their own private chat and with the channels they reach. If you collaborate in two organizations you talk to two different bots, one for each.
When you press Start, the bot shows you its menu, with four buttons: Offer by hand, Queue, Automatic and Channel, which carries the name of the active channel. Each has its own section below. To publish from a link you need none of them: just send it to the bot.
Connecting the bot
The bot uses the organization's token, which its owner saves in Settings › Telegram; Channels explains where it comes from and where it is kept. The Control bot switch is on that same screen and it applies to the whole organization.
What each person needs is to have their Telegram account linked in My account: that is what tells the bot who they are. With the bot on, the Open the chat link takes you to the conversation with the Start button ready, and pressing it finishes the job. Telegram does not let a bot write first, so that step is yours.
The state tells you exactly what is missing. You see it in My account, under Control bot, when the bot is on, and in the Control bot card of Settings › Telegram, which only the owner reaches:
| State | What it means |
|---|---|
| Bot disabled | The organization's switch is off; the owner turns it on. |
| The bot token is missing | The organization has no token yet; its owner saves it in Settings › Telegram. |
| Your Telegram account is not linked yet | The bot is on, but it does not know who you are: link your account in My account. |
| Telegram does not accept the token | The token is not valid: check it in @BotFather. |
| This bot is already switched on in another organization | That token belongs to a bot already serving another organization: create one of its own for this organization in @BotFather and save its token. |
| Waiting for you to talk to the bot | Everything is ready: open the chat and press Start from your account. |
| Connected | The bot is already serving you. |
| You cannot be written to | You have blocked the bot or deleted the chat: unblock it and write to it again. |
Fine print: who sees what, and when it disconnects
- What you write is seen by nobody else. Anyone who writes to it without collaborating in the organization gets a notice that they have no permission, and nothing more.
- It reaches what you reach: the bot works on the organization it belongs to, and only with the channels you are assigned there. The channel picker, the targets of a send to several channels, the queue and automatic publishing show the same as the web.
- If you lose access to that organization, your conversation stops being served the moment you write to it; the bot stays on for everybody else.
- If the owner changes the token or retires the credentials, the bot is invalidated and has to be switched on again.
- Unlinking your Telegram account closes your conversations, not the bot.
Publishing an offer from a link
Send the bot a product link and it returns the message already put together, with the channel's template, its image and its affiliate link. It is the same message you would see on the web: if anything comes out different, that is a bug.
- You send the bot a product link.
- It returns the message already put together, with the channel's template and image.
- The fields: press one and the bot asks you for the new value.
- Several channels, to choose the targets, if you have more than one.
- Discard, To the queue and Publish.
Below the preview comes the keyboard:
| Button | What it does |
|---|---|
| Title, Image, Price, List price, Coupon, Description, Header, Footer, Affiliate link | Asks for that field's new value |
| Several channels | Opens the target picker (only if you have more than one channel) |
| Discard | Throws the draft away |
| To the queue | Saves the offer in the target's queue and tells you how many messages are now waiting |
| Publish | Sends it now |
The labels are always fixed: they name the field, not its value. To know what each field holds, look at the preview, which is what is going to be published.
When you press a field, the bot asks for the value and validates it exactly as Create offer does. Once the offer goes out to all its channels, goes into the queue or is discarded, the bot shows you the menu again, ready for the next one.
Fine print: editing fields and other cases
- When it asks for a field, the bot offers you Cancel; for the header and the footer it also offers your preset texts as buttons, and for the optional fields an Empty button.
- When you answer, the bot deletes the previous preview and sends the new one.
- If you write something it does not understand, or send it a photo, it says so with the menu underneath.
- If you already had a half-finished offer and you send another link, the bot asks whether you are carrying on with the one you have or starting again. Start again loads that link directly, without you having to send it again.
Stores without integration
If the link is from a store we cannot read, the bot still gives you the affiliate link and asks you for the title and the price by hand. From there the flow is the same.
As in Create offer, if no affiliate rule covers that store, the bot warns you as soon as the link enters the offer that it will go out without your affiliate code. The rules are created in Affiliates.
Offers by hand
The Offer by hand button in the menu starts an offer from scratch: the bot asks for the title, the price and the product's link, and then gives you the same keyboard to fill in whatever you want.
If the link is from Amazon or AliExpress and you have that store's connection set up, the bot puts your affiliate code on it, just as when you paste it, and if the offer has no photo it uses the product's, without changing what you have already written. A shortened link, like the amzn.to ones, works too.
Choosing the target
The bot works on the active channel, the same one the web uses. The Channel button in the menu lets you change it: once you pick one you are back at the menu, which names it, and the change shows up on the web at once.
With more than one channel, the Several channels button opens the picker: you tick the targets and the sending buttons tell you how many they act on (“To the queue (2)”, “Publish on 2”). It works like sending to several channels on the web; in the chat, the preview is the first one's and the bot warns you about that. Channels with no Telegram ID appear marked and cannot be chosen.
If a send fails on one channel, the rest are published anyway and the bot tells you which one did not go out. The draft stays open with only the channels that failed: press Publish to retry them without repeating it where it already went out.
Fine print: a draft's channel
A draft keeps the channel you started it in, or the one you choose while it is open: if that channel is deleted, the bot tells you and does not publish it in another one.
The queue from the chat
The Queue button shows the active channel's queue: how many messages are waiting, how many minutes apart one goes out, whether it is active and whether the current hour is a resting one. From there you can:
- Start or Pause the queue.
- Publish now the next pending message, without waiting for its turn; the queue then comes back with its count up to date.
- Change the Frequency: the bot asks for the minutes and saves them. If the number is outside what is allowed, it tells you the range and changes nothing.
If your plan does not include the queue, Start tells you so and leaves it as it is, just like the web.
It is the same queue you see on the Publication queue: what you change here you will see there, and the other way round. To review, edit or delete particular messages, use the web.
Fine print: a faster frequency than your plan
If the queue had a frequency faster than your plan allows, Start changes it to the fastest your plan allows, tells you about the change and starts the queue.
Automatic publishing from the chat
The Automatic button tells you whether the active channel's automatic publishing is running and how many active search profiles feed it, with the Stop or Start button to stop it or start it again.
If the channel has no active profile, the bot warns you and links you to Automatic publishing, because turning it on with no profiles would publish nothing. If your plan does not include automatic publishing, the button tells you so and does not start it.
Notices
The bot also writes without being asked in two cases: when something breaks on its own and when Codingram releases a new version.
Failures go to the owner, because they are fixed in settings only the owner reaches: the channels and the stores' credentials.
- A publication to a channel failed: usually because the bot has stopped being an administrator.
- A store's credentials have stopped working: a tracking ID that is no longer valid, for instance, whether when you paste a link or in a search of the automatic publishing.
Each problem is announced once only, even if it lasts for hours, and the bot writes again when it is resolved. Each notice says where it is fixed, with the direct link.
The new-version notice, on the other hand, is not only for the owner: the bot writes to everyone who talks to it with the changes in that version and a link to What's new. If you collaborate in several organizations, you get it only once.
With the bot switched off no notices arrive, but the failure shows in the application all the same.
What the bot does not do
- It does not let you rewrite by hand the text already put together with the template: it is edited field by field.
- It does not manage the queue message by message.
- It adds nothing to the published message: the channel receives exactly what it would have if you had sent it from the web.
