Chat guide

A menu the system answers the sender with: a welcome message and options to choose from, each a text answer, a file, a sub-menu or a hand-over to staff.

What it is for

Instead of waiting for a member of staff to learn the working hours, the group's location or the services on offer, the sender gets the welcome and a menu, chooses what they want, and gets the answer at once. Whatever the menu does not answer is handed over to a member of staff.

Who uses it

The page opens for whoever holds “View WhatsApp auto-replies”, to look only, or “Manage WhatsApp auto-replies”, to work in it. In the built-in roles: Owner, Manager. They are granted to any role under Settings → Roles and permissions.

Step by step

1. Under “Settings”: type the menu button's name and the welcome message, then “Save settings”.
2. Add the options with “+ New option”: the option's name and description, and its kind: a text reply, a file, a sub-menu, or a hand-over to staff.
3. Order the options with the arrows, and add a sub-menu's own options with the “+” on its row.
4. Check “As the sender sees it”, then tick “Run the guide” and save.

How it works

The guide only runs with at least one option. The sender chooses by tapping, or by typing the option's number or name. Menus go five levels deep at most: ten options in the welcome, nine at the second level, eight below; a menu holding more from an earlier version is flagged, and the options over are marked “Not sent”. An option's name is 24 characters, as WhatsApp allows, and its description 72. Sub-menus get “Main menu”, and from the third level “Back”, and every text answer ends with “Send 0 for the main menu”. A file is a JPEG or PNG picture up to 5 MB, or a PDF up to 16 MB. A hand-over gives the chat to the member of staff if nobody has it, the guide rests on that chat for a day, and the sender gets the hand-over message or, left empty, the default Arabic one thanking them for getting in touch and saying a member of the group's staff will be in touch soon. While the guide runs, the keyword replies rest, and the out-of-hours reply shows above the welcome when the message came outside the hours. Deleting a menu deletes its options with it, and it is restored from “Deleted”, the options deleted with it coming back with it if you tick that, never those deleted before it; an option never comes back under a deleted menu. Two options of one menu cannot have the same title.

On the page

• The options, and the menus sent and hand-overs to staff in the last 30 days.
• The menu button's name and the welcome message side by side, then running the guide, then “Save settings”. While the guide is off a strip above says so.
• Beside it: the welcome message and the menu as the sender sees them, with a short note on sub-menus and the hand-over to staff.
• The options, and the deleted ones, with the count of each.
• The options in order under their menus: each one's kind, what it does and how often it went out. The arrows order, the pencil changes. Twenty rows a page.
• “+ New option” in the welcome menu.

Questions

Why is the guide not answering?

If a strip at the top says “The guide is off”, it is: tick “Run the guide” under Settings and save, and check that it has at least one option. It does not answer a chat a member of staff answered, or one handed over to a member of staff, in the last 24 hours.

Why can't I add another option?

The menu is full: ten options in the welcome, nine at the second level, eight below.