In Albato, you can send messages to and from Telegram through a special bot. It's 5 minutes or less to create your own Telegram bot, and you can do it right in the app. Once you've got your bot, you can integrate it with various apps.
Here are some examples of how you can use Telegram with other apps:
- Salesforce & Telegram: send data from your CRM system in Telegram messages.
- Google Calendar & Telegram: set up automatic reminders in Messenger about upcoming events.
- Tilda & Telegram: get new data from forms on the website.
- Facebook & Telegram: automate the transfer of leads from Facebook to Telegram.
When you connect your Telegram bot to Albato, you enter the Albato webhook in its settings to send all the events to Albato. This means that if your bot is connected to another system and uses third-party functionality, it will be disconnected and will only use Albato functionality.
How to create a bot and get the API key
Create a bot and connect it to Albato or choose the one you have created before from @BotFather.
If you have a bot, follow these steps:
- Send a /start command in a message to the Bot.
- Send a /mybots command in a message if you have a bot and you need to receive its API key.
- Select the bot from the list and request the API key you need to connect.
If you need to create a bot, follow these steps:
- send a /newbot command in a message
- send a name of your bot. It will be public.
- specify the user name. It will be displayed after @ symbol and should end with “bot”. For example: youNamebot or youName_bot.
When you get an API key for a new bot, you can connect it to Albato.
How to connect your bot to Albato
Open the Apps section, click the Add a connection button, select Telegram.
Set the name for your connection.
Enter the API key copied from @BotFather.
Click the Continue button.
The connection is ready!
How to use your bot
Once you've connected the Bot, any user who sends the /start message will be added to the list of chat IDs. If you send this command to a group chat with your Bot, it'll parse the ID of the current group/channel.
To send a message to Telegram, you need to know the chat ID where the message will be sent. You can't use a login or a phone number according to the rules of the Telegram API.
So, if you want to send a message to a user or a group, the bot in the right chat needs to get a message with the /start command. Once it has the chat ID, you can select it from the list and use it in the Send message action.
How the “Incoming Message” trigger works
The "Incoming message" trigger will run every time any user sends a message to your Bot, or a new message appears in a group/channel with the connected Bot. Any commands that begin with the “/” symbol (e.g., /start) are ignored by the trigger and do not start an automation, even if there is a text after a command.
But you can enable some commands for trigger. To do this, open the trigger settings:
Here you can list the allowed commands:
As a result, if the bot receives a message with allowed command and text, it will also run a trigger. For example, it will pass the text /yourCommand Hello to the automation.
The trigger, together with a message text, receives other data too. Example: the name and ID of the user who sent the message and the chat ID where the message came from.
Thus, you can set up additionally the trigger filters to run the automation:
- from a certain text;
- when a certain user in the group sends a message.
- when it receives messages from a particular chat.
Click on the Filter icon to set up the conditions.
In the Value drop-down list you can find From and Chat values. The "From" values show who sent the message. We suggest using it when you're getting messages from a group. The "Chat" values are for the chat info (private chat with bot/group/channel).
Just a heads-up: if your bot is going to be in multiple chats, make sure you use filters.
Read more about filter settings in this tutorial.
How the "Send Message" action works
The "Send Message" action allows you to send a message to the selected chat using any Albato trigger. The functionality is similar to our bot described here.
The difference is that a certain chat is no longer linked to a specific connection, it must be selected from the list in the action field.
Next, you can select the markup type.
You can also create a small text format, such as HTML, with pictures and links.
You can use this action with the Table lookup tool. For instance, you can choose which managers to notify about a new CRM deal. This will help you avoid including everyone in one channel.
It will work like this:
- You receive a new Kommo event (e.g. the "New task" trigger).
- Using the Table lookup tool, Albato checks the name of the responsible user and replaces that name with the chat ID.
- This responsible manager receives a notification in Telegram.
Then set up the action. Select the result of the Albto Table lookup tool in the Chat ID field.
Automation scenario examples
Let’s suppose you need to create a task in YouTrack. Send a message to the bot and it will create a task automatically.
Let’s say you need to find out who’s sending a certain phrase. To do this, just set up a filter on the "Text" field with the "Contains" condition and specify the desired phrase.
This filter is great for use with an action that creates a lead or a deal in a CRM system, as well as a record in Google Sheets. This way, you won't miss a single message, even if there's a lot of spam from users.
