First steps

To publish on Telegram you need a channel, a bot that publishes in it and a few minutes in the setup assistant that Home offers you. If you already have a channel and a bot, go straight to the assistant.

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• Create your account
• Create a Telegram channel
• Create the bot with @BotFather
• Make the bot an administrator of the channel
• The setup assistant
• Your first offer
• What comes next

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Create your account

Sign in with Continue with Google or Continue with Telegram. The first time, the account is created as you continue, on the free plan and without a card, and with it your organization. With Telegram it also asks for an email, because Telegram does not share it. Creating the account goes through it step by step.

Until the organization's owner confirms their email nothing is published; with Google it arrives already confirmed. Confirming the email explains it.

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Create a Telegram channel

If you already have a channel, skip to the bot. If not, create it in the Telegram app, on your phone or computer:

1. Press the button to write a new message, the pencil —on a computer, open the menu— and choose New Channel.
2. Give it a name and, if you like, a description and a photo. It is what your audience will see.
3. Choose whether it is public or private. A public channel has a link like t.me/my_channel, with the alias you choose, and anyone can find it; a private one can only be joined with its invitation link.
4. Telegram offers to add subscribers. You can skip it and share the link later.

To connect it afterwards, a public channel is the most direct: you just paste its link. A private one works too, with one more step: Your first channel explains it.

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Create the bot with @BotFather

The bot is what publishes to your channels on the application's behalf. One is enough: it belongs to the organization and all your channels share it.

1. In Telegram, look for @BotFather, the official one, with the blue verification mark, and send it /newbot.
2. It asks for a name and an alias. The alias has to end in “bot”, like my_channel_deals_bot.
3. When you finish it gives you the token, a line like 1234567890:ABCdefGHIjklMNOpqrsTUVwxyz. Copy it: you will paste it into the assistant.

Do you already have a bot? It works just the same: @BotFather shows you its token from /mybots.

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Make the bot an administrator of the channel

To publish, the bot has to be an administrator of the channel with the Post messages permission, which is the only one it needs:

1. Open your channel in Telegram, press its name at the top and go into editing it.
2. Under Administrators, press Add Administrator and look for your bot by its alias.
3. Leave Post messages ticked and save.

Repeat this step for each channel you add.

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The setup assistant

With the channel and the bot ready, the assistant connects them to the application. While your organization is missing the bot or the first channel, Home offers it to you. It never opens by itself: you open it with Start.

Only the organization's owner sees it, as the one who can connect the bot and create channels.

The three steps

Step	What for	Needed to publish?
Telegram bot	Connect the bot the application publishes through.	Yes
Your first channel	Register the channel and check the bot can publish in it.	Yes
Region and time zone	Confirm which currency and what time things are published in.	No, just confirm

Pressing a step in the list takes you to it, done or not: that is how you change something you had already saved.

Telegram bot

Paste the token in the Telegram bot token field and press Check connection, which saves the token and asks Telegram. If a token was already saved, the field shows it as a row of dots and typing a new one replaces it.

If it answers “The connection works.”, with your bot's name and alias, the step is done and the assistant moves on to the next one by itself.

If it answers something else

• “The service rejected the credentials.”: the token is not valid. Check it in @BotFather and paste the right one.
• If you press Check connection without having pasted anything, the step tells you to paste the token @BotFather gave you in order to check it.
• “It could not be checked because the service is not answering.”: Telegram did not reply. The token stays saved and the step counts as done, so the assistant moves on to the channel and says so at the top of that step; if the bot did not work, Home would tell you later.

Your first channel

With the bot already an administrator of the channel, paste into Channel link, alias or ID something like https://t.me/my_channel, its alias or its ID, and press Connect (or Enter). The assistant asks Telegram and tells you whether the bot can publish there and, if not, why: that it is not in the channel, that it is not an administrator or that it has no permission to post.

With the answer, Channel name appears, filled in with the real name, which you can change: it is how you will see it in the application. Create the channel only turns on when Telegram answers that the bot can publish.

If it does not find the channel, or you already have it

• Telegram cannot find the channel: check the link or the alias, and if the channel is private, that the bot is already a member.
• 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 here the ID it gives you.
• You already have a channel with that ID, or it is archived: the application tells you.

If you already have a channel registered —from Settings › Channels, say—, the step shows as done and does not ask you for another: it tells you which one it is and whether the bot can publish in it, and lets you carry on. Further channels are added from that same section: Creating a channel explains it.

Region and time zone

They arrive filled in with what was worked out from your browser when you signed up: the region, which decides the currency, the separators and the date format, and the time zone, in which the queue's resting hours are counted. Below, This is how it will be published shows how a price and a date will be written with what is chosen, and it changes instantly if you choose another region.

Confirming is the action: That's right, finish saves the two values, even if you have changed nothing, and until you press it the step stays pending. They are settings of the organization, not yours: they apply to everyone working in it. Afterwards they are changed in Settings › Region: Region and time zone explains it.

When you finish

The last screen says Bot and channel ready —or Something is still missing before you can publish, if you skipped a necessary step— and sums up what has been set up. Below, three things you can do whenever you like, none of them compulsory: Upgrade your plan, if you need more channels, more automations or more credits; Connect your stores; and Customize your publications. What comes next covers the last two.

And the Create my first offer button, which takes you to Create offer. If a necessary step is missing, Complete what is missing is there instead, and it takes you to that step.

Leaving and coming back

Skip for now leaves it for later: it stays on Home and you pick it up where you left off.

While a step is still missing you can come back to the assistant from two places:

• From Home. While the bot or the channel is missing, the sheet at the top shows the three steps and the Start button —or Resume, once you have done some step—. Once publishing works and only the region is left, it shows up as a Home notice with its Confirm button.
• From Create offer, on the card “Set the application up so you can publish” —or “You still have setup to finish”, if you have already done some step—, with the same button.

Coming back, the assistant enters at the first step still pending rather than at the beginning, and moving on skips the steps already done, including those done from Settings. Once the three steps are done both entries are withdrawn: from then on the bot, the channels and the region are changed from their own section of Settings.

If one day you delete the bot token from Settings › Telegram, Home warns you again and the Create offer card comes back, on their own. If what happens is that Telegram rejects the saved token, the assistant does not come back: a row in Home's verdict says so, with the button to check it.

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Your first offer

In Create offer:

1. Paste a product link and press Extract data: the title, the photo and the prices are filled in, and the affiliate link is built.
2. Check the preview: it is the message exactly as it will reach the channel.
3. Press Publish.

The fields, what happens when a store gives no data and everything else on that screen is explained in Create offer.

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What comes next

None of this is needed to publish, but it is what makes the offers yours:

• The message: what data each offer carries, in what order and in what format. It is decided in each channel's message template, with the Template editor.
• The image: the product photo over your background, with the prices on top, from the Solo plan. Image template editor explains it.
• The queue: leaves offers to go out on their own, spaced out and at their time, from the Solo plan. Publication queue explains it.
• Stores and your affiliate code: connect Amazon and AliExpress and create rules for any other store. Without the Amazon and AliExpress credentials you can still publish products from those stores, but each one you bring in will spend credits and automatic publishing will not be able to search them. Stores and affiliation explains it.