Messaging - Send text-only message with WhatsApp

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NOTE:

To add this product to your account, contact a Telesign expert. This product is available for full-service accounts only.

This page walks you step-by-step through how to use Telesign Messaging to send a simple text-only WhatsApp message to an end-user.

Before you begin

Make sure you have the following before you start:

• Transaction Callback Service: You need to have this set up so Telesign can send you delivery status updates for your Messaging requests. See Messaging - Callback service for more details.
• WhatsApp account details: To send a message using WhatsApp, you first need to provide the details specified on the Set up WhatsApp for your account page to our Customer Support Team.

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NOTE:

The Transaction Callback Service is also where you would receive inbound replies from the recipient of your Messaging message, if you include that optional feature in your integration.

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CAUTION:

If an end user does not have WhatsApp, the WhatsApp send will fail. We recommend either ensuring your end users have WhatsApp on their devices or including a fallback channel for users without WhatsApp.

Steps

1. Send a POST /v1/omnichannel request. Include the following param values:

Request example

POST /v1/omnichannel HTTP/1.1
Content-Type: application/json
Authorization: Basic 12345678-9ABC-DEF0-1234-56789ABCDEF0:vjE/ZDfPvDkuGNsuqCFFO4neYIs=
Host: rest-ww.telesign.com
{
  "channels": [
   	{
      "channel": "whatsapp",
      "fallback_time": 600
    },
    {
      "channel": "sms"
    }
  ],
  "phone_number": "15558675309",
  "message": {
    "default": {
      "template": "text",
      "parameters": {
        "text": "Buy one get one free! Use code 'BOGO' at checkout on viatushop.com"
      }
    }
  },
  "message_type": "ARN"
}

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NOTE:

Because the message parameters and values are the same for all channels in this example, we just use message.default rather than specifying message details for each channel. If you wanted different text for each channel, you would have to specify message details for each one.

2. If the request is processed successfully, you should see a response with a 3001 status code.

Response example

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Server: nginx/1.17.7
Date: Wed, 14 Oct 2020 21:25:54 GMT
Content-Type: application/json
Content-Length: 137
Connection: keep-alive
Allow: GET,POST,HEAD
{
  "status": {
    "code": 3001,
    "description": "Message in progress"
  },
  "reference_id": "35C8B5D509BC10689196FED2AD551B8A",
  "external_id": null
}

3. If the send in WhatsApp format is successful, your end-user receives a message on their device that looks like this.

4. If the send in WhatsApp format fails, the service tries to send the next specified backup channel (if any).

5. Updates on the status of this message are sent to the callback URL for your Transaction Callback Service. The general callback schema common to both this and other products is described on Transaction Callback Service. Modifications to the callback schema for this product are described on Messaging - Callback service. Search for these callbacks based on the reference ID in the response to your original Messaging request. Each callback payload includes an object with the status of the send for each channel that is tried.

Callback example

GET /callback_endpoint HTTP/1.1
Host: your-callback-url.com
{
  "reference_id": "35C8B5D509BC10689196FED2AD551B8A",
  "external_id": "null",
  "status": {
    "code": 3000,
    "description": "Delivered",
    "last_channel": "sms",
    "updated_on": "2020-05-04 22:07:01:226"
  },
  "channel_status": [
    {"whatsapp": {
      "code": 3056,
      "description": "Message failed to deliver in specified fallback time",
      "reference_id": "65C77D4A6C5C09085694EFB6C554D2BF",
      "updated_on": "2020-05-04 22:06:03.837"
    }},
    {"sms": {
      "code": 3000,
      "description": "Delivered",
      "reference_id": "65C77D4A6C5C09085694EFB6C558B4C7",
      "updated_on": "2020-05-04 22:07:01:226"
    }}
  ]
}

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NOTE:

In addition to the reference ID for the Messaging transaction itself, the delivery status payload also includes a reference ID for the message-send on each channel. These can be useful for troubleshooting purposes.