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Telegram & WhatsApp

Both

Reach an Ask agent from the messaging apps you already use. Ask can run as a bot on Telegram and on WhatsApp, so you chat with an agent in an ordinary message thread. It is handy for quick questions on the go, and a natural way to put an assistant in front of people outside your organization.

These work a little differently from the Slack and Teams bots. A Telegram or WhatsApp bot is set up for one specific agent, and you talk to it one-to-one like any other contact, with no @mention and no picking an agent. That makes it a good fit for a focused, outward-facing assistant: a support line, an FAQ bot, an information service.

Chatting on Telegram​

Open the bot your organization shared (search its @handle or tap the link), then:

  • Send /start to begin.
  • Type your question like any message. The bot replies in the chat and remembers the conversation as it goes.
  • Send /new to start over with a clean slate, or /help for a reminder of what it can do.

Some organizations limit who can use their bot, so you may need to be approved before it answers.

Chatting on WhatsApp​

Save the WhatsApp number your organization shared (or open its wa.me link) and send a message to get going. The bot replies in the thread and keeps track of the conversation. Send /new whenever you want to start fresh, and a chat that’s gone quiet resets on its own after a while, so a much later message begins a new conversation.

Because it runs on the WhatsApp Business service, WhatsApp’s own rules apply: you send the first message to open the conversation, and there can be limits on how long the bot can keep replying after your last message.

Good to know​

  • One agent per bot. Each bot answers as the single agent it was set up for, with that agent’s knowledge and tools working behind the scenes.
  • Text-first. These channels are built around text conversation. For attaching files, voice mode, citations you can open, and the full interface, use the web or mobile app.
  • Same brain, different doorway. The agent is the same one you’d use anywhere else in Ask; only the surface changes.

Setting up a bot​

Unlike Slack and Teams, which you connect from Ask’s settings, a Telegram or WhatsApp bot is created outside Ask by following a technical tutorial. It’s a one-time job for a developer or admin: create the bot on the platform, connect it to an Ask agent, and host it. Once it’s running, they share the bot’s handle or number with the people who should use it. The step-by-step guides are in this documentation, under Integrations:

Tips & gotchas​

tip

Telegram and WhatsApp shine for outward-facing assistants: customer support, FAQ, information lines. For working alongside your team, the Slack bot offers more: multiple agents, thread context, and links back to the web app. The Teams bot does the same inside Microsoft Teams.

Starting over

If the bot seems to be carrying old context into a new topic, send /new to reset the conversation.

ChannelsSlack botThe internal-team messaging bot, with multiple agents.ChannelsMicrosoft Teams botChat with your agents inside Teams.ChannelsEmbeddable widgetThe other outward-facing channel: embed Ask on a website.